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July 08, 2017 - James Reese

Fishing spot location: Llano, the slab
Begin and end times: started 10am finished at 2pm
Air Temperature, weather conditions: started 80s and finished high 90s light breeze and partly cloudy.
Water temperature, water condition: clear
Flies that worked: crayfish imitation, lunch money, green and yellow poppers.

Fished with Jonathan Hayhurst (sgff) and another friend. Started at the slab and worked our way downstream. The fish were aggressive and we had 14 or 15 bass between us. Pounding the banks with cover produced many of our fish. Johnathan even got his first guad on a fly rod. Several of the fish caught were very nice guads. Had one very large, but sickly, largemouth. It was quickly released and hopefully survived. Afternoon conditions were extremely hot. 

June 11, 2017 - Richard Barnard

Fishing spot location: The Slab on the Llano River off of 1431
Begin and end times: 6:30am - 9:45am
Air Temperature, weather conditions: The temp at sunrise was 70 degrees and it had not quite reached 80 when I left
Water temperature, water condition: Not sure about temp, but it felt great, it was very clear and had a nice flow. Easy to wade
Flies that worked: Small popper in YELLOW(the yellow was VERY important)

Wheels rolling at 4:30am. I arrived at The Slab as the sun was coming up and a nearly full moon was going down. After tying on, getting ready and a quick picture, I was into the water with a yellow popper (topwater). Immediately I had perch on the 5wt. With a short wade straight across the river, I had a nice bass on the line. And, so it went all morning. Perch and bass one after the other.

As luck would have it I had my line break. It was only 6lb test. I needed to make a long cast into a small hole. I used every bit of the line that I had stripped off to reach the grass line on the other side. I let go of my extra line as it fed through the guides and laid the fly gently in place. As I diverted my eyes to my reel to gain control of my line, a nice bass hit my fly and ran straight at me. I stripped line quickly but could not catch up with him. When I did, it caused enough tension for him to run off with my HOT fly.

I had a second fly that was identical except in color. This one was green. I tied it on and moved to another large deep pool. I worked it over for 30 minutes with the green. I got a few small boils, but no strikes. There had to be fish here. Deep water, fully shaded, grass lines under large shady oaks. Nothing though. I went to my fly box and found a slightly larger, similar popper and in yellow. I made the change. First cast was taken by a small perch. The second was my biggest bass of the day. A few casts later was another bass, and I was back in business. Smaller perch would hit the frilly parts of the fly, but they could

It was a great morning and the Orvis 5wt 4pc 9‘ rod with an Orvis Clearwater II performed flawlessly. That 5wt is awesome on these little river fish. So, good day...beautiful day...and, as the employees at the Orvis store said, yellow is the color on the rivers right now.

July 23, 2016 - James Reese

Fishing spot location: The Kingsland Slab
Begin and end times: 8am-2pm
Air Temperature, weather conditions: High of 98
Water temperature, water condition: Clear, warm, 59 cfs flow at Llano gauge
Flies that worked: Medium sized dark green popper, size 10 green/brown woolly bugger, various hopper patterns

Went to the Llano with a co-worker and caught several absolute slabs of sunfish, several very nice bass (almost exclusively on poppers), and believe it or not two very nice blue catfish (26inch+) one on a Crawfish pattern and the one my buddy got on a grasshopper dry fly.... that's right, a dry fly for catfish. My fish was bigger and took several impressive runs. Besides being very hot towards the end it was enjoyable.

June 25, 2016 - Ed Siska

Fishing spot location: The Kingsland Slab - TPW access point at Kingsland RV Park
Begin and end times: 8:30AM-1:00PM
Air Temperature, weather conditions: warm, patchy clouds
Water temperature, water condition: warm temp, clear water, 281 cfs flow at Llano gauge
Flies that worked: brown wooly bugger, bead head hare’s nymph, autumn splendor

SGFF members Ed Siska, Mike Martin and guest scouted the Llano, caught small bass and perch plus a catfish, river flow was moderate and running clear

April 17, 2010 - Mike Seery and Faith Fricano

Fishing spot location: 1.5 miles below the Kingsland Slab
Begin and end times: We arrived on the water about 0730 and left about 1300
Air Temperature, weather conditions: Temp about 58 degrees, overcast with slight intermittent drizzle
Water temperature, water condition: low to middle sixties, clear
Flies that worked: clouser minnows size 6 and 8 white and grey, white and olive

A nice slow walk down river, found a slot along the right bank that held several fish. We each caught about twenty fish

June 13, 2009 - Bruce Wilks

Weather: Mostly hot and Sunny 99deg Plus
Time Fishing: :30am to 4:30pm
Fishing Group: Lindy, Bryan, Greg and me….

We all geared up with back packs and all. Me and Lindy started fishing in front of Longs and slowly worked our way upstream, where we fished the sloughs, runs, riffles and pools until 12:00 noon, then we caught up with Bryan and Greg who had hiked up river to some holes on the far bank… Greg and Bryan had caught a lot of fish by 1:00pm time in the shade using poppers, hoppers, buggers, crawfish and Matt’s Bugs patterns… They each caught nice bass, lots of sunfish and a fresh water drum each about 16 inches… I think their total fish count was 60 plus fish…! It was fun watching Bryan casting and catching fish while wading chest deep…

By 1:30pm Lindy caught 11 sunfish and 1 Guadalupe bass. I concentrated on searching, stalking and sight casting to drum and carp using small crawfish patterns, buggers and damsel flies. hooked one drum that pulled the fly (poor hook set) and had two others pick up my fly but I missed the hook set… By 1:30pm I had only caught one nice sunfish on a crawfish pattern and another on a hopper…

At about 2:00pm Bryan and Greg hiked back downstream to go home… Me and Lindy fished a little longer and caught a sunfish each, then started back to the truck at about 3:00pm. It was hotter than hell on the hike back, but when it got hotter we would just lay down in the water and floated around… We did this more than once to cool off… It was a good day on the Llano and even more so when we found two small pools that had some overhanging tree shade where the upriver end of Longs Camp ends… We caught a bunch of fish in about 45 mins… I could see it had a lot of fish in it, so we started casting and caught 14 nice sunfish each, Lindy landed a LM bass about 12 inches.

The real surprise came when we each caught a pair of really nice big Rio’s that I marked off on my rod handle and measured the length to be 10 inches and 10.5 inches once we got home! Biggest Rio I have every caught on a fly rod and Lindy’s 2nd and biggest Rio ever… These Rio’s put up a good fight and were beautiful nice big and fat fish… … Up until then Lindy had caught 12 fish total and I was having an off day on my catching with only 3 fish landed to hand, then we found the small holes next to camp full of sunfish, bass and Rio… Could not get the rest of the bass to take a fly, but the sunfish were nice to catch and the big Rio’s were a great fly rod catch for both of us…!!! Sorry no pics on the Rios due to my camera so battery was dead, but you can confirm my story with Lindy… Lindy ended up with 28 fish for the day and I ended the day with 18…

This is a case of a good fly fishing student out fishing her instructor.

May 30. 2009 - Bruce Wilks

Location: Llano River at Longs Camp
Weather: Mostly hot and Sunny 92deg some clouds
Time Fishing: 10:30am to 7:00pm

Lindy and I got geared up with back packs and all. We were going to go down river, but we stayed in the park area and fished the sloughs, runs, riffles and pools….

I caught four Guads up to 13 inches and a number of sunfish and one Nice Rio I sight cast to for about 10 mins that was on a spawning red in about 12” of water… Caught it with a #8 olive chicken leach… Caught the 13” guad on a big bend back #2 hook… Lindy caught mostly sunnies and three guads and was casting really good and learning how to fish this section of the Llano with all the sloughs, runs, riffles and pools…. … We had fun and when it got hot we would just lay down in the water and floated around… We did this more than once to cool off…

I had some brief excitement at the end of the day at about 7:00pm I was sitting on a rock in the channel right in front of where we had parked by you… I was waiting on Lindy to empty the rocks and sand out of her wading boots… I looked over the left looking at the water running in the channel and sighted what looked like a big fresh water drum, just sitting there facing up stream about 25 feet away from where I was sitting in about 12” of water…! I did not even get up from my sitting position, I sight cast to this fish twice using a crawfish pattern fly. The first cast landed the fly about 2 feet in front of its nose, then this fish went after my fly very aggressively just as I started striping it… I pulled the fly out of its mouth on the first take, then cast again while it was swimming away at an angle still looking for the crawfish that had got away, landed the fly about 8 feet in front of it, then crawled it along the bottom a few seconds… This fish kicked its tail traveled at least three feet to eat my fly and then hammered it, I set the hook let it have some line then for some stupid adrenalin pumped moment… I locked down the fly line with two fingers on the cork, then snap goes my tippet and the fish swam off with my 3 dollar crawfish fly…5 sec but stupid me got excited and locked down on it instead of letting it have the reel and drag… It did not break at any knots but broke my 10lb tippet like it was nothing…

May 22, 2009 - Jim Kettleman

See this related Fishing Report,

I fished up river from Longs camp after splitting up with Ron. I was able to catch quite a few Guadalupe bass in a fast moving section of the river. I found that when I cast across the fast moving water into the eddy on the other side, my floating line would then sink as the line crossed the current. This put the clouser (squirrel tail with white marabou) down along the bottom. This greatly increased my catch rate.

As for the mention of the snorkel, I had brought my mask last weekend when I took my son with me. We were rained out but I still had my mask with me on the 22nd. After fishing the deeper pool upstream from longs, I then hopped in with the mask on. I saw a few bass and some large catfish. I was curious to see what I was not able to.

I caught small bass on deer hair poppers, llano bugs, and clousers. Overall, I did not have much luck as far as large bass, but I did catch quite a few. I also caught numerous perch.

March 21, 2009 - Bruce Wilks

Location: The Llano River about 2 miles downriver of Kingsland slab where the river heads into lake LBJ
Water Temp: 68
Air Temp: 81
Water Quality: Gin clear
Time Fishing: 3:30am to 7:30pm 3:30pm to 7:30pm
Fishing partners: Greg, Blake, and Lindy and Bryan

It was a good day on the river. I only caught 6 on the Llano due to the whites seem to be leader shy... Fishing in the same hole as my friend Greg who caught about 18 whites. He was using about 1’ of floracarbon tippet with a 8’ foot leader along with using a B series Teeny sinking line 24’ sink with 60 feet of floating line on his 4wt SAGE.. Blake and I were using Uniform Sink + and standard short mono leader and tippet, which did not work as well as Gregs setup... Lindy caught her 4th white bass on a fly rod. Blake caught some whites and a nice hybrid Smallie/Guad of about 3.5 lb.. Whites were 11” to 14.5” Beautiful fun day, but a very long day and a very long walk back up River…

July 4, 2009 - Michael Seery

I went to the slab on Friday morning and was on the water at 0605. I had to wait for the sunlight so I didn't break an ankle. The water was beautiful and there was plenty of flow through the pools all across the width of the river; although none of them were very deep. I walked upstream for about 3/4 of a mile and saw some fish, but most of them saw me first. I tried a hellgramite pattern, a foam frog, large nymphs, a crawfish and several minnow patterns. I started with 1X tippet and got to 5X fluorocarbon. The water was very clear. I caught a few Sunfish on small nymphs and one foam spider. Otherwise, all I got was alot of practice casting. I did not do any better on the return trip to the truck. It was a good exploratory trip, but I won't be hurrying back.

August 9, 2007 - Don Johnson

I fished downstream from the 3404 low water crossing. I fished down one side of the big island and back up the other side. I caught: a lot of little five and six inch sunfish, one ten inch Guadalupe bass, one ten inch white bass (where did he come from?), and one fourteen incher that I didn't recognize; maybe a freshwater drum (see photo). All the fish were caught on subsurface flies: clousers and woolybuggers. The water was clear. The USGS guaging station in the town of Llano was reading about 410 cfs, and wading was easy.

April 22, 2007 - Bruce Wilks

Went fishing on the Llano River last Sunday, April 22, 2007 with Cris Johnson and his father. We parked and started wading down stream at about 12:15PM from Fm 3404 Kingsland Slab Low water crossing bridge. We fished until 3:00PM. We all caught Guadalupe's, sunfish. I added a nice size sucker to my list of species caught on a fly rod, which I caught on my 3wt/4wt ADG Titan Rod with WF/4wt/floating line 7.5' leadr+tippet, "cheeto" fly... Cris and his father both caught some nice Gradalupes and sunfish. River flow was perfect for wading and the water clarity was clear.