Welcome Bill Gammel!!

[Paul Arden]

Hi Bill,

How have you been? Thanks for giving us a week! Maybe you could start off by telling the others what you studied at university for your thesis!

Thanks, Paul

[Rich Knoles]

Hi Bill,
Long time! How is the family? How old are the boys?

I want to hear about the Texas Tarpon fishery?

[Rich Knoles]

Did you happen to let Bill know he was doing this?

[Bill Gammel]

Hey sorry for the delay. Baseball practice started tonight. I just walked through the door.

Paul, I developed a fishing method that would be useful as a lake management tool. I have a degree in Wildlife and Fisheries Management from Texas A and M Univ. My specialization was warm water ecology. At A&M that means you study largemouth bass management. The standardized method of collecting fish is with an electro fishing boat. It is expensive and many private lakes in Texas you can't get a heavy boat into. So when I got to Southwest Texas State's Masters program and found out my major professor was a semi pro bass fisherman, i did what any body would do. I proposed developing a standardized fishing method that would result in statistically sound data with out the electro fishing rig. It worked great for the largemouth bass with basically 1:1 ration between fishing and electro fishing data. My graphs for bluegill looked like someone shot the page with a shotgun. Needless to say I turned an 18 month masters program into just shy of three years. I wanted to be thorough.

I learned a lot; most notably, don't ever push off a mental fence post while the electro fishing rig is on. It want end well.


Rich, I hope those daughters of yours are still racing boats. Sounded like fun. Good to hear from you.
Most of the Texas Tarpon fishing is seasonal and offshore with boat rods. It is pretty consistent and the fish are good size, but for the most part not a fly fishing thing. If you are interested in fly fishing for them, I would contact Scott Graham. He guides redfish on the coast and then stops what ever he is doing when the tarpon show up. He has a group of tarpon that consistently come inshore at Port O'conner. From what I understand the fish are in much shallower water, but not sight fishing schools like you would off Duck Key in Florida. Scott is throwing sinking flies and line at rolling Tarpon. So you are seeing them roll, but not traditional sight casting. Port Isabel has small tarpon at the jetties and in the harbor, but if I get that far south I just going to go fishing with Rick.

Hope everyone is doing well. Look forward to the conversation.

[Eagle Crest]

Welcome Bill!

I read your vitae, and so I'm going to ask you about gar. On my bucket list is catching gar on the fly. Spotted gar probably more so than alligator gar, but gar. I'm from Central Oregon but I spent quite a bit of time in Louisiana where I keep an 8wt salt rod and basic gear and lots of flies. I spent 2015 trying to break the code on a large freeway pond, a couple of rivers, canals and the old Inter-Coastal canal. I'm casting from shore.

Any tips, fly suggestions, fish behavior clues,... ?

Thanks, Steve

[Paul Arden]

Something I notice in teaching Bill, is that we sometimes (quite often actually) find students who understand what they need to in their heads but have great difficulty in actually doing this with their bodies. What techniques do you use to deal with these students? Generally speaking they are the very bright ones!

Thanks, Paul

[Bernd Ziesche]

Hi (and welcome) Bill!
Could you make a living purely on teaching fly casting in the US?
I am asking because I wonder how many potential students there should be when having 5 million? fly fishermen in the US?
Cheers
Bernd

[Lasse Karlsson]

Hi Bill

Great to see you here again!

Since you and your father's 5 essentials have become a stable part of teaching flycasting world wide, could you tell the story about how you ended up on those?

Cheers
Lasse

[rowdy]

Hi Bill

Could you also follow on from Lasse's question with anything you would add to the 5 essentials now?

Cheers
Pat

[Bill Gammel]

How to catch gar? They are very hard to catch and release. Hooking them is the big problem. I would snell a 4-6 inch piece of white nylon rope to a straight piece of 40 pound mono. Then comb the rope out like hair. There is no hook. You must let them chew the fly until their teeth are tangled. You can color the rope and glue on an eye, but i think it is not needed. I would tell you to sight cast them and try to swim the fly beside their head. They will strike to the side better than in the front. I think that has to do with their eye placement. I fished them mainly at night with a spot light while spotting big bass on the beds. Kept a rod rigged for them in the boat (only a few times). Time was much better spent fishing the bass. If you are looking for a new fish in LA, try fishing for bowfin with your fly. They will take poppers and fight pretty well.

Paul will answer later tonight

Bernd, I can't make a living teaching at the college much less teaching lessons. I have a desire to stay in Baytown TX. It is an ugly little industrial town, but it is home. My wife and I have families that live here and it is a good duck hunting area. I might could make a living if I lived in the prime tourist / fly fishing area and was willing to travel. I gave up traveling to speak when my kids were born. The problem is out of 5 million fly fishermen 1/2 to1 million don't need you. They are pretty good. I am not saying they could not improve, but they truly cast well enough to be good fisherman. The rest are horrible, but their only goal is to be good enough that a really good guide can help them catch a few fish. From what I can tell the people that I have known from Europe, have more of a drive to be good at something not just good enough. I could be wrong. My Dad was the person that I knew that truly had a desire to master something whether it was wing shooting or fly fishing/casting. He could throw a fly 100 feet with a six weight and had caught tons of fish when he started taking lessons. In short, I could not make a living. I would think it would take a marketing miracle to make a living on just lessons.