Reminder…..The Mini Expo is this Saturday. Come on out for a full day of all things fly fishing. Don’t forget to stop by the Reel Recovery tables for retreat info and some fantastic deals on fly fishing equipment.

Reel Recovery is a national non-profit organization offering free Fly-Fishing retreats for men living with all forms of cancer. The Houston Region will have tables set up at the Mini Expo on August 24 with volunteers and brochures to explain our program and to offer an opportunity for participants to sign up for one our 3 remaining 2024 retreats. These retreats are all located in Texas at Waring, Glen Rose, and Navasota.  Come by and visit if you, are any man that you know that is dealing with cancer, who would benefit from a weekend of free fly fishing, good food, comfortable lodging, and support from your brothers.

In addition, we will have a wide choice of rods, reels, flies, and gear donated to Reel Recovery by the estate of the late Jerry Hendon.  Jerry was an avid fly fisherman and Reel Recovery volunteer who passed away this past Spring.  Orvis, Sage, and Gloomis equipment will be offered as well as various travel cases, nets, etc. at very reasonable pricing.  We can take payment via cash, checks, Venmo, Zelle, and PayPal.  No credit cards please……!

https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/the-woodlands-tx/jerry-hendon-11749480

All proceeds will go to Reel Recovery Texas to support our retreats.  

Thank you.

https://www.reelrecovery.org/?doing_wp_cron=1710073208.3147909641265869140625

Guest Speaker for the July meeting will be Jud Cole with Rio Anglers and The Rio Guadalupe Resort. Jud is a well known and established fresh water guide in the Texas Hill Country and points in between. His presentation is both entertaining and informative and includes an overview of the changes being made at the Rio Guadalupe Resort along with the services available from Rio Anglers guide service.

Last Wednesday, June 12^th, I had the opportunity to fish a private lake up near Bryan/College Station with Paul Robertson and his grandson, Caleb Robertson.  Caleb is from Mississippi and a promising young fly fisherman, and this outing had been in the planning stages for almost a month.  We used my 14ft RMR cata-raft which is a 3- seater rigged for rowing.  It turned out to be grand opportunity for me to fish on my own cat as Paul really wanted to improve his rowing skills while tutoring his grandson who occupied the front seat.  Normally, on a raft, drift boat, or other inflatable, the man on the oars seldom gets to fish!  I fished the rear seat most of the day, and I saw the lake from a completely different perspective. Quite fun it was.

If you remember, last Wednesday was an unusually pleasant day for June in East Texas.  The sky was partly overcast, the wind was 3-5mph, the water smooth and with good clarity.  We got on the lake about 8:30am and got off around 1pm when things really started to heat up.  I don’t think that the temps got much above 85 degrees for the morning.  The evening became blistering as usual.  The bite was very brisk all morning long, and the fish count was around 50 between the 3 of us.  Blue gills, red ears, and greenies were the main attraction, but a few bass did come out to play.  Caleb got to fish in a honey hole that I knew about, and he caught over a dozen huge panfish with his fly rod.  Those things were in the 1lb range and big as your hand.

I did catch an old bass that weighed about 6 lbs.  He was a pretty sad sight with battle scars and one good eye.  I think that he just wanted to give up. 😊

All in all, it was a great morning in God’s paradise with good friends.  I like days like that!

Tom Strawther

By: Tom Strawther (TroutCreekFisher)

Steve Edwards and I floated the San Marcos River with Ryan Schaper on April 18 and had one of those trips that you remember for ages.  We put in underneath the San Marcos River bridge on Hwy 130 (Toll Road) north of Fentress.  Take out was at the Wahwahtaysee Resort about 7 miles downriver.  This was brand new water for both Steve and I and is a section of the San Marcos that doesn’t get nearly the pressure as it does up around Staples and Martindale.  It is a beautiful stretch of river and not many houses along the route.  At times it almost felt like wilderness fishing. 

The weather was mostly cloudy, and the temps were moderate until about 2PM when things started heating up.  Water clarity was slightly off color which is good for the San Marcos and its predator fish.

The bite was on from the first minute in the boat.  Black poppers with the occasional dropper got good results all day long.  Things slowed a little mid-day, but white streamers were still taken, and the popper action heated up again.  It was a 50+ fish day including a constant mixture of LMB, Guadalupe Bass, bluegills, and sunfish.  Two LMB’s in the 2-3lb range were landed as well as a nice 2.5lb Guadalupe.  To my regret, I hung into a very nice LMB, but he spit my streamer about the time that Ryan was getting out the net!  That fish would have been a trophy size bass for the San Marcos.

Ryan Schaper exceeded expectations as a guide.  He is well versed in botany, entomology, fish habits, and operating a raft.  He is also a conversationalist but not overpowering.  I can’t recommend him enough, and we both look forward to future trips with him.

Paul E. Robertson
March 4-7, 2024

I enjoy fly fishing on streams that I can wade. I enjoy tent camping on a flyfishing trip. I enjoy catching fish on a fly rod. But, sometimes, a flyfishing trip is more important than catching fish. Such was this trip with Tom Daugherty. I have known Tom since August 2009. At that time he joined our Memorial Hermann Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) team as an interim CPE Supervisor. He ended up staying with us until March 2012. During those years we had a wonderful collegiality as we worked together to rebuild our CPE department, which had lost several CPE Supervisors in the prior year or so. 

In addition to being work colleagues, we developed a deep friendship in those years. During that time we discovered we had a mutual interest in fly fishing. Tom was the one who introduced me to the Texas FlyFishers of Houston club. With his encouragement I took the Fly Fishing Academy course and the Introduction to Fly Tying course. I went through the Fly Tying course a second time to be with Tom. During those years we did not fish together often, as both of our lives were quite full with work, family, and other activities. 

After Tom left Memorial Hermann, he went on to do interim work at several other CPE programs in Texas and New Mexico, but we stayed in close contact. In April 2013, I was diagnosed with Mantle Cell Lymphoma and started a regimen of chemotherapy. As part of making sense that journey, I started writing what I would call “One TentMaker’s Hike Thru the Confusion and Chaos of Cancer.” The term “TentMaker” came from reference to the Apostle Paul. I used the hiking metaphor, as prior to the cancer diagnosis I had been quite involved in backpacking as my way of connecting to the outdoors. Sometime in that chemo process, I began to loose my hair. I recall standing in the shower and seeing my fallen-out hair on the shower floor. I got out of the shower, went to the sink, and cut off what was left of my hair. It was an act of defiance and an attempt to remain somewhat in control. I wrote about this in my newsletter and posted a picture of me bald. I will never forget an experience a few days later. I was sitting in my office and I received an email from Tom. A picture was attached of him sporting his new bald head look. He had cut off his hair as a symbol of his solidarity with me in the journey! I just sat in front of the computer and wept. Tom went on to say then, as he has many times since, that he would be with me in the journey until the end. Since then we have been “brothers.” Of course, at that time, we both thought the journey might be 4-5 years, which was the average life expectancy for Mantle Cell Lymphoma at the time. Thankfully the life expectancy has improved considerably since then with the on-going research and development. 

 In August of that year, Tom and Jerilyn invited Judy and me to visit them at their cabin in Raton, NM. This would become the first of quite a few trips to the cabin. I had just finished chemo and was recovering physically. The next year when we went back to the cabin, Tom and I scheduled a guided fly fishing trip with Doc Thompson on the Cimarron River. On that trip I caught my first trout. That propelled me into a slow, but methodical journey of immersing myself more into fly fishing and some trout fishing (little did I know I was preparing for retirement). For quite a few years, Judy and I made an annual trip to the cabin in Raton, and Tom and I fly fished on those trips. We fished the Cimarron, but also other places in NM like the Pecos River, the Rio Costilla in the Valley Vidal, and the Rio de los Pinos. In addition, we have done quite a few other flyfishing excursions together through the years. 

 I don’t remember the exact year, but I’d guess maybe around 2008 or so, Tom invited me to join him on a trip to the Guadalupe River. For several years, we spend a few days there. In 2021 Tom did not renew his membership with the Guadalupe River Trout Unlimited (GRTU) Lease Access Program (LAP). So, I decided to join. Thus began what has now been three seasons of flyfishing on the Guadalupe River. For each of those seasons I have spent over 20 days on the river. It has been wonderful. Since Tom did not join the GRTU LAP, it became my opportunity to invite him. For each of the last three years Tom and I have met at the Guadalupe for a few days of fishing. In 2022, Tom and Jerilynn relocated to Burleson, TX, making the trips even more meaningful as a way of staying connected. 

All this is background to the trip we took recently. In the past, we have camped, and we have stayed at a hotel in New Braunfels. This year we decided to stay at the Horseshoe Riverside Lodge which would give us easy access to the water and a place to rest mid-day. We had a beautiful patio and view of the river. We arrived Monday afternoon, got settled and went fishing on the river right below the lodge. As we were preparing to fish, I remembered these words, “Fly fishing is the most beautiful way of trying to catch a fish; not the most efficient, just as ballet is the most beautiful way of moving the body between two points, not the most direct. Fly fishing is to fishing as ballet is to walking.” (Howell Raines) 

 Because the weather was quite warm, we had decided to fish in the mornings, 7:00-10:00 a.m.; eat a big lunch; fish again as it was cooling down, about 4:00-6:30 p.m.; and then have a lite snack in the room in the evening. That routine worked out quite well. 

 After fishing on Tuesday morning, we had lunch at the Wildflour Artisan Bakery and Grill in Canyon Lake. It was quite warm so we enjoyed the break before fishing that evening. On the evening outing, I noticed a caddis hatch and a trout rise in some soft water off the side of a run. I decided to try a dry fly rig (top water for you non-flyfishers) and ended up getting eight takes on a dry fly with a soft hackle fly trailing behind it. I got three of them almost to the net before they got free. That was okay, since I was going to let them go anyway. I was fighting most of them downstream which put a lot more pressure on them. 

 Wednesday was a little cooler. For lunch we tried out a fairly new restaurant in town, Elios Osteria e Pizzaria. We had a delightful meal on the patio. Before our evening fishing we decided to explore a little upstream from the lodge. We made our way up to an abandoned watermill. To my surprise it was actually turning, though it wasn’t connected to anything. But we took in the sights and sounds, wondering about the history of the watermill. We then waded further up to a weir, just taking in the beauty. After all, “You will never be a flyfisher if you don’t love nature. No matter how good the fishing, you will spend more time looking at flowing water, mountain sunsets, diving birds, and clouds of mayflies than you will spend catching fish. In fact, I think that the reason I love flyfishing so much is that it is the thing that connects me to the energy, beauty, drama, and peace of Nature.” (Peter Kaminsky) 

 We had hoped to catch a hatch that evening and do some dry fly fishing. “I’d heard through the grapevine that a hatch should be on, so this was somewhere between an act of faith and wishful thinking.” (John Geirach) There was a small hatch, but we didn’t do so well on the catching. We did notice that a fly fisherman just upstream from us did a little better. Nevertheless the fishing was great. Though we didn’t catch a lot of fish, as Janaa Bialek once said, “Only an extraordinary person would purposely risk being outsmarted by a creature often less than twelve inches long, over and over again.” 

 Tom headed home Thursday morning. We got up early, packed up and said our goodbyes at 6:45 a.m. 

 I decided to fish for the morning before heading home. I went further downstream than where Tom and I had fished. The water was little warm, but I found some fish. I ended up hooking 5 trout (landed 3), 3 carp (landed 1), and 8 sunfish. I guess the warmer water had the carp and sunfish more active. We had some wonderful times fishing, enjoying nature, and catching up. Some trips are more about friendship than they are about catching. If you’re alone when the fishing is slow it means one thing, and another if you are with a friend. This was one of those lucky times I was able to be with a friend, who is like a brother. 

 “Fly fishing reminds me to slow down, live now, let go. I cast as I breath. I retrieve line to the rhythm of my heart beating. And so, I stand in the river casting back and forth, trying to lose that feeling of being alone. It is then that the rainbow rises and takes my offering. I raise my rod, and all at once, I am no longer alone. I am connected to his powerful runs, facing into the current. Silver line connects us, both fighting to live—two beating hearts. He comes to my net. I hold him gently, rocking him back and forth in the cold rushing water. ‘Gain your strength, dear warrior,’ I say. Am I speaking to him or to myself? With a kick of his tail, he returns to the river—and I go with him.” 
       ~Steve Ramirez