The Home Water-Loy Lake

Now that I'm an orphan (daughter and her family moved to Houston, other daughter off to TCU, senior son never ever ever home, Zach in Denton, Tam out of town, both of those @#$*&$# dogs gone to their new home) I took the opportunity to spend a quiet evening on Loy Lake. Loy Lake is a remnant of the FDR era, the WPW to be exact, and was once the gathering place for local teenagers. There was,at one time, a dance floor built on piers out over the upper end of the lake, a concession stand, and a swimming platform. Now, the old girl lies alone and mostly untouched. This day, however, there were a few other visitors. One guy launched his bass buddy, and while he was parking the trailer, a rogue gust blew his little craft out into the middle of the lake. Good neighbor Sam here paddled my trusty kayak to the drifting vessel, and like a modern day Captain Cook took her captive and towed her to shore (under paddle power, I might add). The fishing was pretty slow, as one would expect for early evening in August on topwaters. I caught about six in the six-inch range, and then some "smaller" ones. Greens, redbellies, a bluegill, and some shellcrackers. No basses, no carps. Oh-and all those ads that tell you a Native Ultimate is safe to stand in to fish-don't believe it. Perhaps if you are a gymnast or ballet dancer guy you could pull it off, but I do know that you can't stand to attend the calls of nature. Had it not been for a nearby Bud Light can, the situation would have grown desperate. Thank God for the penchant of Grayson county residents to litter a beautiful old work of art with their empties. The rod is a fairly new TFO six-weight that I bought in Broken Bow last year when I forgot my trout stick, the reel is an old Hardy Marquis 7/8 that I bought years ago as my northern pike reel when we lived in Montana. The line is a Mastery trout floating 6 weight. The fly of the day was a black rubber spider in the rocks.

http://www.co.grayson.tx.us/Special/LoyLake/LoyLake.htm

Carp on the Fly-July 2009

Both these beauties were taken on a scorching July afternoon below the Morris Shepard Dam at Possum Kingdom Lake. Modest size carp were feeding in the shallow riffles, with their backs out of the water. I must have cast to forty or fifty of them, and landed two. I had a great big one on for a brief moment, but he took my fly and went his own way. Casts had to be fairly long, and the fly was left motionless on the bottom until I suspected the carp had moved over it. Then, a typical strip strip strip retrieve, more often than not ignored. The fly de jour was a Befus fly, the rod was the old six-weight Orvis graphite that Tam gave me when I graduated Med School in 1981. The reel was a Cabelas SLR I bought off a guy on the now-defunct Texas Fly Report. And-what trip to the Brazos would be complete without a trip to the worlds loneliest Whataburger-I met brother Jim for a Whopper with cheese.