An Ode To Texas Waters

I moved to Texas because of a river. More accurately, I moved because of my wife’s job. But I did fish the San Marcos River on an exploratory visit there and told myself I’d move if I caught a Guadalupe bass. Blam. Caught one. The San Marcos was a great introduction to Texas water — an emerald jewel running through ranchland near Seguin. My guide, Christopher Adams from Gruene Outfitters, told me it was told to him that the bass start biting when the temperature hits 100 and the cicadas start singing. They did. On queue. My addiction was born. So it should have come as no surprise to me that I would fall in love with a Texas River.

There’s nothing wrong with all the greatness of Austin. Nightlife. Music vibes. Youth amidst rock and country royalty. An unique spot on earth — a southern and slightly westerly town. And there is so much more to my experience of Texas. Pedernales. Hill country. Waters of the Edwards aquifer. I was lucky to have happened on the Pedernales and it is why I will go back to Texas. It pulls you in.

Water is the thing I least expected to find in Texas. Clear limestone spring water bubbling up from the aquifer and running, pooling and dropping the canyon floor down to the Colorado River. It’s heavenly. Seriously, I might have imagined heaven like this at a young age. If you disregard the extreme heat, rattlesnakes, coral snakes, tarantulas, fire ants and coyotes, it is even more so. But I know they too have their place. Just because they predate me doesn’t affect their integrity.

The river I miss most in Texas? The Pedernales. It is constant. I hear it has nearly dried up in years past but not this year. It was at a healthy flow when I was in the area from November through June. In fact, it was often too high to fish. I found this river almost by accident when looking for a new place to fish. I took Harlan and Cerys there and we walked the rocky banks. As I recall it was hot. For November at least.

The Pedernales is pronounced Pur-Duh-NAH-luss by locals. I have no idea why. But that’s how it is and you don’t really press too hard for an answer to why they pronounce things the way they do, not because they are belligerent or unfriendly but because there is no logic. It becomes a feedback loop of “that’s just how you say it.”

The river flows over a hundred miles of Texas hill country from Kimble County to where it joins the Colorado River at Lake Austin. I mainly fished it where it flows through Milton Reimer’s Ranch. Along that little stretch I caught largemouth bass, smallmouth bass, Guadalupe bass, white bass, gar and several types of sunfish. The river flows through a canyon here and when you come up on the canyon’s edge, you see this clear-to-green ribbon of water down in the valley and you just want to take flight to take it all in. Once you descend the canyon walls and wade in, it’s unnerving to see prehistoric-looking gar feeding on top of the water as buffalo carp lumber upstream in the deep water in front of you, barely visible in the green depth. And the snakes. There are diamondback rattlesnakes and coral snakes, neither of which I ever saw. The fact that my local fly shop had more than one fly pattern based on the tarantula had me a bit worried; although, I never saw one of those either. Something about the whole place made me expect to see a sleestack on the rim of the canyon any minute.

These days, I’m living back in North Carolina and we have a whole different set of watersheds and streams here with their own positives and perils. I look back on rivers like people. I miss their personalities. I miss specific times I spent with them. The best part about this is there is no shortage of rivers or people no matter where I go. So life is looking pretty good here in the dark days of winter — despite my distance from the instant therapy of the Pedernales.