Spent a few days fishing the Lower Roaring Fork River in Colorado over the long weekend. The fishing was as great as the scenery and weather. A san juan worm with a pheasant tail dropped off the back seemed to be the preferred fly choice. I caught a lot of great fish with about 75% being rainbows and 25% browns. Wild fish are so much more rewarding to catch then the hatchery fish I am accustomed to.
Not much you can do with 5x and a size 20 pheasant tail. This fish headed down stream quick and ended up breaking me off. Sure would have liked to have seen him.
The Llano river is a great little river in the hill country filled with a variety of sunfish, largemouth and Guadalupe bass. It has great fishing in the Llano and Mason Texas area. Besides the fishing there are a lot of other cool things to do. Just south of Llano is Enchanted Rock State Park where you will find the largest exposed granite rock formation in the world. And there is James Ekert Bat Cave just outside of Mason for a front row seat to millions of bats as they leave the cave every evening. And if you want to do some hunting check out Star S Ranch they have a wide range of African game, common exotics and monster whitetail. And you can't miss out on the several Pit BBQ joints in Llano and Mason.
Some great floats on the Llano are from FM 1871 to FM 2389, and FM 2389 to Simonsville Rd. You can stay at Dos Rios Camp Grounds for this float. There is also great fishing around Llano and Castell. I recently stayed at Castell Cabin in Castell Texas. The cabin is right on the river and can be used as a base to float down to Schneiders crossing. I didn't do a ton of fishing on this trip as it was more of a family get away trip for the weekend. I did catch some nice red breast sunfish and some small Guadalupe bass in the few hours I fished. One of the best books on access and fishing locations regarding Texas Hill Country Rivers is Kevin Hutchison book Fly Fishing the Texas Hill Country.
