DALLAS -- Casey Ryan is a dedicated fly fisher from Dallas, who's caught numerous striped bass weighing 10 to 16 pounds in the last three years.
He started fishing for stripers in the Red River below Lake Texoma when big rains in the spring of 2007 loaded the river with fish.
"You could catch small stripers that spring on nearly every cast," recalled Ryan. "As the flood waters started to subside and cool, bigger fish started biting. I caught many double-digit stripers up to 14 pounds that fall and winter."
Ryan mostly fishes with 7- to 9-weight fly rods, but one of his goals was catching a 10-pound-plus striper on a much lighter 5-weight rod. A 5-weight rod is a popular choice when trout fishing for rainbows and browns that weigh less than five pounds.
"I started researching the best places to catch a 20-pounder on a fly, and I was looking into Arkansas, Tennessee and the northeast coast," Ryan said.
In December, Texoma-Red River fishing guide Scott Bridgess saved Ryan some travel expenses. Bridgess often fly fishes for stripers in the lake and the river.
On a December day in the Red River, fishing was painfully slow. In fact, the two anglers had not caught a fish by 10 a.m. Ryan fishes almost exclusively with Clouser Minnow streamers in various colors and sizes.
He had a smaller Clouser already rigged on his 5-weight rod, so he picked it up and started casting the small fly on the assumption that it might tempt a small fish, and catching any fish was better than catching none.
Ryan fishes with a sinking line to get the slow-sinking fly into the strike zone. Ryan made a cast and waited for the fly to sink deep enough before starting his retrieve. A fish bit, and he knew it was a good one, but he was unsure of how good, or if the fish was even a striped bass. Ryan has caught freshwater drum as big as 17 pounds on a fly.
"The fish ran into my backing pretty quickly," Ryan said. "I started getting line back, but the fish fought deep. The fight only lasted five or six minutes. When the fish first came to the surface, I thought it was eight or nine pounds. As it got closer, I thought it might weigh 13 or 14 pounds."
Only when the tired striper was in the boat did Ryan realize that his goal of catching a 20-pounder had been achieved. The fish weighed 21 pounds on a Boga Grip, a device that's accurate enough to be accepted by the International Game Fish Association (IGFA).
"Catching a 21-pound striper on a 5-weight rod is quite an accomplishment in my book," Bridgess said.
It's not such a big deal to the IGFA, which recognizes fly-rod catches according to tippet strength rather than the size of the rod. And the Red River is Oklahoma water, and that state has no fly-rod records.
Had Ryan caught his 21-pounder in Texas waters, it would have been the third-largest striped bass ever reported in Texas on a fly but a still long way from a state record. That mark was set in 2006 by John Erskine. While fly fishing in the Guadalupe River, he caught a 36.65-pounder.
Bridgess has caught fly-rod stripers from Lake Texoma as big as 15 pounds, but the big ones have come from the Oklahoma side of the lake. The Texoma fly-rod record, as recognized by Texas Parks and Wildlife, weighed 5.03 pounds and was caught by Robert Maindelle in 2002.
"One of my clients caught an 11.25-pounder in Texas waters but did not apply for the record," Bridgess said. "I've caught many fish bigger than the current fly-rod lake record, but I don't want to enter a striper as a lake record unless it weighs 10 pounds or more."
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