The Guadalupe River

The Guadalupe River in Central Texas is the southernmost freshwater trout fishery in the United States. This tail-water river flows out of Canyon Lake and maintains a low enough temperature to sustain a year round population of rainbow and brown trout over 10 miles of river. The local chapter of Trout Unlimited works closely with the state and the river authority to stock the river to help maintain a healthy population of fish. The average fish is 12-14” but it is not uncommon to catch fish over 20”.

I’ve lived in Texas for most of my life and have fly fished all over the country but somehow I have never fished the Guadalupe in my own backyard. Decades ago, my excuse was the fishing wasn’t great as the river flow wasn’t being managed well, hurting the trout population. And maybe I was being a bit of a snob about fishing for stocked trout. But I finally decided this past year to put those doubts aside and give the river a chance. I’m glad I did.

My buddy Bob Kearl and I booked a guide to do a full-day float with Lone Star Fishing in late March this year. As it turns out, we booked at the very tail end of the high season. From April until October, the heat of summer brings the water temperature up enough to send the fish deep and fishing is slow and hard. If you really want to fish during the summer months, make sure to do it very early in the morning before the sun starts warming things up.

Our guide, Justin, was fantastic and did a great job of putting us on fish. The water was fairly clear and pretty low as there hadn’t been much rain the previous few weeks. In some places, we had to get out and walk the boat through some real shallow spots, but otherwise we spent the day in the boat, casting along banks and through riffles as we slowly drifted down the river. The water was so slow that we only covered about 3 miles in the 6 hours we were in the boat.

We caught about a dozen fish between the two of us, most of them in the 14”-16” range, with a couple closer to 18”. There were no hatches to speak of during the day and very little surface activity, so we fished the whole day with a nymph pattern and a small midge larva pattern as a dropper behind it. When it got slow, I would tie a dry fly on and toss to a couple of lazy rises, but never induced a strike.

It was a beautiful, albeit a bit cloudy, and warm day with enough trout to keep us engaged all day. I’ll be back next fall/winter and try my luck in December and January when the water is colder and the fish more active. Looking forward to posting more reports from my local stream!