Fishing Aquila Dam Spillway

A dirt road under an already fiercely hot Texan sky, and this is only mid May, a foretaste of the blast furnace to come. The heat and light bring an intensity, throwing everything into high relief. Not dissimilar, when you think of it, to one of those annoying filters on your cell phone camera, Satanbook or Instagram.

Well, this art blog's banned from Instagram and Satanbook, but not from the Aquila dam spillway and there it was, ready for action. I say action, I've never dialed this spot in to any great extent, but figured it'd make a change from Lake Whitney. So off I went in search of Catfish, Gar and anything else that came along in the midday heat.

Thanks to the pythonic wisdom of our latter day Delphi, Youtube, I came armed with frozen shad, worms, tiny baitholder hooks and small circle hooks. Idea being that you cast for catfish with the small circles, weightless and baited with worms, and send out shad fixed to a perch hook tied to a bobber for Gar.

Gar philosophy's interesting, at least to me, because they're an incredible game fish and well worth the sport - minutes, it seems like hours, of subterfuge, patience, false starts, new beginnings,  and then BAM, set the hook and off you go. A thrashing, jumping, prehistoric monster's on your line and it's game on. Tiny hooks seem one way to go, as they'll pass unnoticed by the fish who gleefully swallows your shad, allowing you to go for a hookset in the corner of Gar's mouth when it goes for its second run.

OK, fine, but before all of this excellence, the fish has to actually go for the bait. Normally this isn't an issue, Gar are notoriously ready biters, but not today at Aquila spillway. I had a few bites and a coupe of halfhearted runs, but the fish dropped the shad in boredom and disgust before I could even think of closing the deal. Huh. I put it it down to heavy fishing pressure, and maybe the rig needs rethinking.

A few bites on the worms though, with a small catfish coming ashore and a larger one who slipped the hook at the bank, annoyingly. Still, good fight. Should I have hooked the small cat with a big circle hook and used it as live bait for Leviathan Cats? Certainly thought about it, but the little fella went back to fight again another day.

So there you have it. A good day out in the sun and a fair amount of action, if little catching. Did the fish win this this round? Yes, they did, but watch out underwater adversaries, this isn't over, not by a long chalk.

Moral? Don't sit at home, staring blank-faced at a screen when you can get outdoors and fish. In other news, all the commies are mad because our President's taking hydroxy and zinc and isn't sick.

Fish on, or not,

LSP