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March 29, 2008 - Don Johnson

Keith Lovin and I fished at Colorado Bend on Friday, March 29. We arrived at the park about 11:00am. When we paid our entrance fee, the lady behind the counter said “Fishing has been pretty good between dawn and 9:00am and between 4:00pm and dark, but with this front coming in, who knows who how it will be?“. It turned out that the fishing was not very good for us; we each caught one white bass.

After about two hours of unproductive fishing we decided to drive up the road to Sulphur Springs Camp which is a private fishing camp just up river from the state park. The fellow who took our entrance fee ($4.00 each for day use - the same as at the state park) said that when he cleaned up the park's fish cleaning station that morning he disposed of the remains of seventy five fish. (He also said, looking at Keith’s San Gabriel Fly Fishers shirt, “Are you guys fly fishermen, or did you just buy that shirt “, which we thought was pretty funny, or a little wise ass, depending on how you look at it.) The river at the camp had what looked like the kind of current that attracts spawning white bass, but we had no more luck here than we had at the state park. The camp had several camp sites populated with groups who were probably white bass fishermen, but there were no fishermen on the water when we there. Overall this looks like a good place to avoid the crowds during white bass season at the state park. Unless I have specific information that the fish are at the park and not also upstream at Sulphur Springs Camp, I will probably fish at Sulphur Springs on my next trip.

March 13, 2008 - Don Johnson

Our fishing party consisted of Mike Ives, Keith Lovin, Brooks Bouldin, and myself. We left from Georgetown just a little before 7:00AM and arrived at the park around 8:20AM. The weather in the morning was cool, about 60 degrees, and overcast, but by mid afternoon the temperature had risen into the lower eighties and the sky was mostly clear. The level of Lake Buchanan was 1017 feet, and the river flow, upstream at the San Saba guaging station, was 150 cfs. Water temperature was 65 degrees. It was windy all day, but casting was difficult only during occasional gusts and short periods of higher wind.

We drove upstream as far is motorized traffic is allowed and parked. In the morning we fished the river by the parking area. The water was off color (you couldn't see the bottom in 2 feet of water); the bottom wasn't slippery, but the wading was a little difficult because you couldn't see the bottom and the frequent large rocks made the bottom uneven. There was no current, and there were no fish. We fished for about 2 hours and caught nothing. In the afternoon we walked about a mile upstream on a hiking trail and came to place where there was noticeable current in the river. This was where the white bass were, and we began catching them almost immediately. The fish were almost all in the thirteen to fourteen inch range; they were taking small clousers in grey or blue-grey. We weren't keeping the fish, and we didn't count the catch, so I don't know how many fish were caught, but we caught more than enough to make up for the slow morning and allow us to call it a great day fishing.