The following reports are from Grant and Barry (FW Outing: 2025 South Llano River Float (Thursday through Sunday, April 10-13, 2025.))

I got out to Junction Thursday afternoon with enough time to unpack and get rigged up for fishing Friday morning. It was a little warmer than expected in the late afternoon, so I waited till the sun got a little lower and went out right in front of the camp with my 3 wt. for golden hour. I had seen some big wakes in the far pool so I tried to sneak over and cast to it. After having no luck there, I turned around to fish a different pool next to me. After just a couple casts I ended up hooking into a small large mouth. As I stripped it in, I thought I saw weeds hanging off. I thought the fish was a little small for that, and when I got it closer, I realized the weeds were in fact a snake latched on to the back of it. The peanut gallery on the bank provided ample snake advice while I decided how to get my fly back. I didn’t want to lose the one that was already producing after all. I let the fish back into the water and the fish proceeded to tail slap the snake across the pool. When the fish took off from the snake, I scooped it up, got my fly back, and got out of the water. Rolfe and Ozzy were too busy offering snake advice to take a picture of my accomplishment, and my phone was sitting in my chair next to them.

Friday, I hopped in with Puck on the two man pontoon. Conditions were fantastic. Levels were on the lower side, and we had to get out and pull through a few sections, but it was worth it. Standing on the front of the two man offers a unique view that you don’t get sitting in the kayak. I am amazed at how much you can see just standing up with full sun and clear water. I caught plenty of fish… less were landed.

Turns out Puck borrowed me a fly with a straight hook at some point. I didn’t notice until after the third fish in a row spit the hook. Lesson learned, check your fly after snags with rocks, trees, and other immovable objects. Species caught included sunfish, bluegill, Guadalupe bass, and large mouth bass. In addition, Puck caught a cichlid, which was on my list of new to me species for this trip.

In an attempt to achieve my goal, we found some cichlids in a little pool, but they rejected my #8 olive wooly bugger. Puck handed me his rig with a smaller pattern. As I cast to the lilly pads in the pool, the blue gills kept jumping in front of the rios taking my fly cast after cast until the rios disappeared. Maybe next time I will land one of the native beauties.

Saturday conditions deteriorated as the wind picked up soon after getting on the water. I was trying to fish holes that we didn’t have the opportunity to explore the previous day due to terrific fishing up stream, but the wind gave me the speed of an outboard on my kayak. My anchor wasn’t able to keep up with the wind and I continued to bounce down the river. I tried to use my pedal drive, but I struck a rock maneuvering and lost one of the fins. Surprisingly, I saw it fly off and hit bottom. I paddled back around, beached, and located the fin again… deeper than I am tall. I stripped off my gear and dove in to recover it, only to realize I had damaged it. I geared back up, dried out, and continued down the river to camp. Even though the fishing was not as good as Friday, I still had a great time getting out fishing the Llano for the first time.

Sunday’s forecast showed winds the same as Saturday. I decided to load up and leave the fishing for Puck and Antonio rather than contend with nature.

Grant F.

Thanks for leading the Llano trip, Rolfe.  I had another great time a Junction!  Attached are some photos along with my waiver.  Brought the waiver with me to give you but forgot in the rush to get on the water.  Jim and I picked up a hitchhiker outside of Kerrville.  I pulled into a picnic area on I-10 to check the straps holding our kayaks.  While we were inspecting one of the bikers approached us and asked if we could help him out.  He said someone abandoned this puppy that he and his buddies found and they’d want someone to take it to a safe place.  Once we saw the puppy we couldn’t say no.  Jim held it all the way to Schulenberg where we were able to deliver to friends of mine who live in LaGrange.  Hopefully someone will adopt this sweet pup from the local animal shelter.

Barry