Andy Dear | Monday, 6 May 2024
Back in the 1960s, the city of San Antonio built two large lakes that functioned as cooling ponds for the associated coal powered, electricity generating facilities that provided energy for the city of San Antonio. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Lake Calaveras and Lake Braunig became known as two of the big bass hotspots in the state of Texas, but that all changed when Texas Parks & Wildlife began to experiment with stocking other exotic species in these two fisheries.
During the mid-1970s, TPWD started experimenting with stocking several different saltwater species into both Calaveras and Brauning. I can remember very vividly when they first introduced Redfish into Brauning Lake, as it was big news around the southern part of the state. My dad was so excited about it, that we made several bank-bound excursions to Brauning, but never did any good. The Redfish absolutely flourished in Brauning, with one caveat...they don't reproduce in freshwater, so the state has to maintain an ongoing stocking program.
The program has been so successful, that not long after Redfish were put in Brauning, they also put them in Calaveras as well, where they have been equally as successful. So much so that the state tried other species including Tarpon, Nile Perch, Orang Mouth Corvina, and Peacock Bass, none of those other species took to the year-round warm water produced by the power plant discharges like the Redfish though, and have eventually died out.
During the 1980s, when Calaveras and Braunig were two of the state's largemouth Bass hotspots, we used to fish there quite often. And, for about 10 years those two lakes pumped out 10lb plus Largemouth Bass with stunning regularity. Once the Bass fishing started to decline, however, we never went back to chase the Reds.
Recently Jack and I have been looking for a few places a bit closer to home than the 150-mile drive down to the saltwater flats. I am not exactly sure why the heck it hadn't dawned on me that the flourishing freshwater redfish population in both Brauning and Calaveras may be just the ticket for bridging the gap between chasing redfish with a fly, but not having to make a 300-mile round trip to do so.
While both fisheries receive plenty of local and regional publicity for their unique fishery, there simply is little to no documentation about anyone chasing these fish with a fly rod. That's not to say that it isn't happening, but I suspect that it's not happening on any large scale. So, to that end, we are already gearing up for a trip to Calaveras in 2 weeks...more to follow.
Hope you all are having a great week,
Andy