By: Marshall McDougal
25 On the Fly tournament returns to the Lone Star state for the second year. After participating in it last year, it was a no-brainer to sign another team up and hit the road to explore the various fishing opportunities in Texas. My buddy Kevin and I set out to target as many species as we could over the twenty day period.
The Event
This is an Orvis sponsored tournament which is basically an anglers scavenger hunt. The event originated in Colorado with The Mile High 25 On the Fly Tournament and is now in its second year in Texas. The 25 On the Fly Crew was awesome and put together an incredible event. This year, they moved it to a virtual 20 day tournament. Rightfully so as the state of Texas is a big one to try and cover in just a weekend of fishing. Swag packs were sent out in the last week of October with the official tournament wristband and the species list was posted. It was game on!
The Species List:
1. Tarpon – 500pts
2. Bowfin – 500pts
3. Grass Carp– 500pts
4. Smallmouth Buffalo – 425pts
5. Mirror Carp – 400pts
6. Freshwater Drum – 375pts
7. Flounder – 350pts
8. Jack Crevalle – 300pts
9. Sheepshead – 300pts
10. Common Carp – 250pts
11. Redfish – 250pts
12. Black Drum – 225pts
13. Rio Grande Cichlid – 200pts
14. Chain Pickeral – 200pts
15. Smallmouth Bass – 175pts
16. Largemouth Bass – 150pts
17. Gar (any subspecies) –150pts
18. Koi – 150pts
19. Striped Bass – 150pts
20. White Bass or Wiper – 125pts
21. Speckled Trout– 100pts
22. Rainbow Trout– 100pts
23. Guadalupe Bass – 95pts
24. Crappie 75pts
25. Sunfish / Bluegill – 50pts
Team Challenges:
Orvis Fly Casting Instruction Challenge – Cut off your fly and find a non-fly angler on the dock, along the riverbank, or at a boat ramp who doesn’t know how to fly cast. Give them a quick 5-minute lesson, film it and have them cast your fly rod until the line lays out nice and straight in the water. You can teach a roll cast or pick up/lay down cast. Best video here wins a prize pack from Orvis. Your first video submitted here will be worth 15 points!
Fulling Mill 2 Fly Challenge – Use the flies found in your Swag Bag to catch fish! Submit a video that clearly shows one of the supplied flies in the mouth of your species catch. The team with the most Fulling Mill 2 Fly Catches will win a pair of fly boxes! Your first video submitted here will be worth 15 points!
Scientific Anglers Longest Fish – Measure your longest fish for a chance to win a pair of SA Fly Lines! We must be able to clearly see fish measurement! Your first video submitted here will be worth 15 points! The tape measure must be on top of the fish
Costa Sunglasses – Kick Plastic Challenge – Pick up trash along our waterways for a chance to win a pair of Costa Del Mar Sunglasses. Fill your net, your truck bed, fill a trash bag, drag the spare tire to the dump! The team with the most participation here wins! Your first video submitted here will be worth 15 points!
Fly Lords Best Story – The team with the best story posted to Instagram throughout the 2 days will win a pair of Fly Lords Prize Packs! Be sure to tag @25onthefly, @orvisflyfishing, @flylords. The team that wins the bonus prize pack will have the most clever use of IG reels/stories while demonstrating to others good sportsmanship and stewardship of our natural resources.
Weekend 1
This year, due to some scheduling conflicts and both of us having prior trips planned during this time frame, Keven and I never actually got out on the water together. When I was in town and able to fish, he was on a trip and vice versa. Kevin got out on the first weekend of the tournament and hit it hard while I was duck hunting in North Dakota. The weather was absolutely treacherous the first weekend. Kevin battled through frosty conditions with scattered rain as he got a line wet. Living closer to Dallas his first stop was down on lake Whitney where he spent some time getting the bite figured out. Once he found the hot fly, the largemouth bass would not stop biting. After hitting multiple spots in the rain, Kevin finally got into some crappie, throwing brightly colored wooly bugger jigs around brush piles. The rain picked up and it was time to get off the water. There was still a lot of tournament left and plenty of days to fish.
The following day, the next destination on the list was Lake Granbury. At the opening to the Brazos, there are plenty of species on the list to check off. Still being a foggy and wet morning, Kevin made his way over to the river inlet and took the kayak out. Hitting docks and backwater pockets, the only fish he was able to net that day was the infamous freshwater tarpon. A whopping 9” bluegill came to the net and we had hit our third species of the tourney.
Weekend 2
Finally we got some good weather in the Lone Star State and Kevin was back at it again. My lousy butt was still up chasing birds in the Dakotas and had plans to hit it hard the last weekend of the tournament. Kevin was up early and on the water as the sun was coming up with much calmer wind conditions. This was the perfect opportunity to chase tailing carp in the Trinity river. Slowly working up and down the banks, he looked for inlets and sand bars where he was quickly into feeding fish. Throwing the entire fly box at them, there was little to no success. It is always a love/hate relationship with carp because some days they will eat anything you throw at them and others, they wouldn’t touch a fly with a 20 foot pole. This was one of those days and after getting over fifteen shots at carp, he hung up the wading boots and called it a day.
Second day of the weekend was another calm morning. There was a slight breeze the just disturbed the top of the water enough for it to be a great day to sight fish. Again, Kevin worked the banks of the Trinity and after getting four shots at tailing carp, he found the dinosaur he had been after. A 6ft alligator gar cruising in less than 12 inches of water. The behemoth would be worth not only the 150 points for landing it but 10 points per inch totalling close to a 750 point fish. With a rope fly already tied onto the 8wt, he started double hauling, landing a perfect cast a few feet up river of this cruising monster. Stripping straight in front of its face, it was the perfect retrieve with not even the turn of a head. Picking up the fly and putting it back down, Kevin continued to bring the large baitfish pattern right across this gars nose. On the fifth attempt, he finally got an eat and the fight was on! Alligator gar are notorious for putting on a show. These fish battle you hard and larger ones like this can reach absurd weights and have insane power. After a ten minute battle and turning the fly rod into a candy cane, the gar finally breached the surface and spun so the leader was caught up in his teeth. It didn’t take long after that for him to break the leader and disappear back into the depths. An absolute heartbreaker for the team as 750 points swam away with the fly still in his mouth. The grind continued as Kevin kept targeting carp. After casting to a few more picky fish, there was a sudden breach in the surface of the water as a spotted gar came up out of the muddy river. Switching back to the 8wt, Kevin began casting as this fish repeating the same thing he had done with the alligator gar. On the second pass, his line went tight and he was in a battle to land another species. This was a much smaller gar and although he put up a fight, it only took a matter of minutes before Kevin put him in the net. Not the monster he was after but this 29” fish ended up bringing in 340 points and landed us our longest fish of the tournament. The sun set as another successful weekend came to an end. We had found ourselves sitting a top the leader boards in 3rd place.
Weekend 3
After all the fishing Kevin had done, we were sitting at 4 of the 25 species with lots of points still on the board to be caught. It was my turn to get out and hit the rivers while Kevin headed down to Costa Rica for the weekend. My first stop is usually a bread and butter carp hole right off the Trinity river. Spending the first couple of hours of the morning sight fishing to picky eating carp, I came away empty handed. Knowing we still needed to put some striper and sandies in the net, I took my chances at fishing below Lake Texoma on the Red River. Within minutes of getting there I was seeing silver flashes all up and down some of the larger riffles coming off deep pools. I tied my tried and true double wooly bugger rig up and went to work hammering both striped bass and white bass for two straight hours. Even though the extra fish did not add any points to the board we had secured two more species in the tournament. After I had my fun, I turned to the 8wt and tied some buggy looking carp fly on. I had seen smallmouth buffalo all over the place and actively feeding. One of my favorite ways to fish is by sight fishing to tailing carp. They call it the poor man’s redfish for a reason because when you hook up on one of these fish, the fight is on and they will battle you just like a bull red in the gulf would. I had plenty of shots at these feeding fish but wound up not getting great hook sets and fell inches short when my best opportunity spit the hook just a foot from the net. The sun was going down and I knew I had another day ahead of me so headed home and tucked in for the night.
The second morning came bright and early as I beat the sun out of bed and hit the road to head to another great carp river. Pulling into the parking lot as the sun started peaking over the rocky alcoves of the Paluxy River, I got to rigging up and took off on the trail to my honey holes. The first hour was hit or miss, heartbreak after heartbreak as fish denied my fly and spooked. Then I got one to eat, the fight was on. I was excited to put another species in the bet but the close this guy got, the more it looked like a catfish. Sure enough as I netted that slimy specimen, I confirmed it was a channel cat… I had been “catfished.” Continuing to work my way down the river, I came across another small school of tailing buffalo. Slowly working my way down stream of them, I threw a carp-it bomb upstream and worked it slowly in front of their feeding like. Slow short ticks and boom! I was hooked up again. This guy was big and he was not happy his afternoon lunch had been a fake. After a long fifteen minute fight of giving more line to the fish than I was pulling in, he started to give up and slowly make his way to the net. Securing our seventh fish was a huge point scorer for us and the stoke level was through the roof. This was just what we thought was needed to crack the top three(what we didn’t know is it wouldn’t put us anywhere close). I gave it another hour of fishing and not being able to pull another species of carp from the river before I hit the road again and moved. There was certainly no lack of effort to find another species but with time running out on the tournament, the 3:00pm buzzer came too quickly and we were left with 7 of the 25 species in the bag.
Weigh In
The tournament was over and scores were submitted. The combined effort of the Cowtown Fly Co team has landed us in 9th place overall. Still, the 7 species we were able to net was an improvement from the previous year and after completing all the team challenges, we felt the only thing we could have done differently was to get salty.
I can’t thank the guys at 25 On the Fly enough for putting this event on as well as all the sponsors – Casting for Recovery, Fatties on the Fly, Bajio Sunglass, Orvis Fly Fishing, Scientific Anglers, Riversmith, NRS Fishing, Tupp’s Brewing, Fly Lords and OnWater(all great companies to go check out). It truly was an incredible weekend spent on the water and we had a blast meeting some fellow anglers in North Texas. We took a lot away from participating in the tournament and learned about some species we don’t typically target on the fly. It opened my eyes to all the incredible fishing opportunities offered in the great state of Texas and we look forward to continuing to explore new water and create custom boxes to chase these fish!
Final Thoughts
It can be daunting to compete in tournaments. I had my hesitations the first time I signed up for one.It is frustrating to see others landing fish, scoring points and checking species off their lists when you cannot seem to land anything. In the end, it is an opportunity to spend time outside and alongside people you care about. The fly fishing community has been growing ever since the pandemic. I am seeing more fly shops offering new opportunities such as weekend tournaments and community events. Sign up and go have some fun, explore new waters, learn something new and support the companies buying in and sponsoring these events. These tournaments offer much more than just the competition. There are lots of opportunities to meet and connect with fellow anglers and guides, have a beer and chat about the local fisheries and fly selection or just get out to meet like minded community members.. After fishing in a few tournaments, I have grown to enjoy them and the relationships I have made through events like these. Go in with an open mind, fish hard and enjoy!
If you are interested in upcoming events in the Texas area, feel free to reach out to us and we will help you get signed up for them. Look forward to seeing you at next year’s Lone Star 25 on the fly!