Fishing in the big city
Shannon Tompkins reveals the surprising rewards of angling on the urban bayous.
A black-crowned night heron flapped away muttering an under-its-breath squawk, peeved at yielding the prime fishing spot to fly rod-toting Mark Marmon’s approach.
The heron’s aggravation was understandable. This was a prime stretch of water. A wide, thin feeder stream sluiced into a much larger waterway, the purling current pumping welcomed oxygen and what passes for a bit of coolness into the bayou on this blistering July day.
The combination of the added oxygen, meshing of currents and surface ripples that provide overhead cover in the otherwise surprisingly clear water are things that draw fish. The heron and Marmon recognized that. Their insights into hydrology and fish behavior were confirmed through polarized glasses as Marmon unlimbered his 2-weight fly rod and checked the small, green fly tied to the tippet.
“There’s fish there … and there … and over there, on the other side. See the long, dark shapes against the bottom?” Marmon said, pointing to submerged forms holding almost motionless beneath several inches of water the color of a very weak margarita.
The scene was in some ways reminiscent of the fishing challenges anglers face on a rocky, spring-fed Texas Hill Country river, a snow-melt-fed mountain stream in the Rockies or even a shallow coastal flat. But this was none of those places. It was the concrete-lined carcass of Brays Bayou, just inside the southwest corner of Loop 610 and square in the middle of the fourth-largest city in the nation.
Unexpected delight
Brays Bayou and the dozen or so other such waterways veining Houston — the streams that give Houston its “Bayou City” nickname — never will be mistaken for the Llano or the Yellowstone. But these urban waterways are far from the dead, dirty, lifeless open sewers that many imagine them. Despite being dramatically and sometimes shockingly manipulated, modified and mangled to fit human purposes, the bayous — even the concrete-lined miles of Brays Bayou — support aquatic life, including surprisingly vibrant fisheries.
Evidence of that was easily visible on a morning last week as Marmon and I stalked a handful of stretches of Brays Bayou inside Loop 610. It is a fishery Marmon knows well; he has been fishing Houston’s bayous and introducing anglers to those fisheries for more than 30 years.
A lifelong angler who developed a love for fly-fishing, Marmon lives in Bellaire, barely a double-haul cast from Brays Bayou. Marmon, an Episcopal priest, also runs Metro Anglers, which shepherds anglers looking for instruction in the quasireligion that is fly-fishing, as well as offers his services as a guide for anglers looking to experience fishing Houston’s urban waterway.
“The bayous have a tremendous, untapped and under-appreciated fishery,” he said. “It can be challenging; the fish can be extremely wary, and the water conditions have to be right. But you can have some great fishing right here in the middle of Houston.”
And it is a diverse fishery.
“Over the years, I’ve caught 18 species of fish from this bayou,” Marmon said. “Largemouth bass, crappie, catfish, sunfish, Rio Grande perch, longnose gar, spotted gar. I’ve even caught white bass in Brays.
But while those native freshwater species haunt Houston’s urban bayous, the biggest angling draws are, like so many Houstonians, transplants.
Houston’s urban bayous are dominated by a handful of alien species introduced either accidentally or nefariously into local waters, where they have thrived. Of the four or five most commonly encountered fish species in the “improved” (concreted) sections of Brays Bayou, all but one are exotics.
Mullet, most associated with coastal marine waters, are the most obvious “native” fish found in the bayous. And, to the surprise of many, these smallish (most weight less than a pound) vegetarian mullet can be caught on flies, something Marmon quickly proved at our first stop. Casting a small, green, bead-eyed fly to a visible school holding perhaps 50 mullet, Marmon was soon fast to an animated, acrobatic mullet.
Armored catfish
The bayou also is loaded with plecostomus — armored catfish. Looking like something out of a science-fiction movie, these shovel-headed, black/blue, “sucker-mouth catfish” with their armor-like scales and underslung mouths are easily seen in the thin waters of channelized and concreted portions of Brays Bayou. Dumped into the bayous by people who bought the fish as “cleaners” for their aquariums and found they outgrew the glass cages, the South American natives have thrived. Schools of “plecos” roam the bayou, frequently broaching the surface.
While the armored catfish grow to as big as 5 pounds, most are less than half that. And, as vegetarians, they are not prone to striking flies or other baits.
Tilapia, an African cichlid introduced nefariously to Texas waters, also are common in the bayou. These perch-like fish, which also roam the shallows of the wide, concrete “apron” bracketing the trench-like concrete channel, can be caught on flies, Marmon said. But they are picky about it, demanding exacting casting and presentation of small weighed flies to trick the fish. But these deep-bodied fish, which seldom top a couple of pounds, are like native sunfish in that they fight far above their weight category.
The big-game fish of the bayou — the fish that draw most anglers to Houston’s urban bayous — are the carp. Common carp and especially grass carp.
“They are incredibly powerful fish,” Marmon said of grass carp. “There’s a reason we call them ‘Bellaire bonefish.’ ”
Indeed, grass carp are shaped a bit like the bonefish of tropical marine flats — long, cylindrical bodies with large tail that can move the fish with amazing speed and power.
And they are a sizeable fish. Most of the grass carp encountered in Brays Bayou weigh between 4 and 6 pounds, Marmon said. But they get much bigger. His heaviest carp was a 48-pounder.
Targeting grass carp and most of the other fish in the concrete-lined reaches of the bayou is a spot-and-stalk affair, much like targeting bonefish on the flats. And the fish require much the same tactics to trick — careful approach, exacting casting and fly presentation.
“You’re casting to fish you can see,” Marmon said. “And when you hook one … they just explode.”
Over the years, Marmon and others who chase the fish that they tongue-incheek call “Bellaire bonefish,” “Brays bonefish,” and sometimes “golden bonefish” for their gold/olive coloration, have developed specific tactics and flies for the bayou’s grass carp.
Those tactics include concentrating their fishing from midmorning through early afternoon.
“You need the sun to be up so you can see fish,” Marmon said, noting the low angle of early morning and evening sunlight puts a glare on the water surface that prevents spotting fish in the shallows.
They also have learned to identify the area where grass carp are likely to congregate. Like most fish, grass carp gravitate to specific spots offering the right combination of current, food and protection. They, like most fish in the bayou, tend to cluster around the mouth of “feeder” creeks. They also like structure anomalies that create accelerated current or breaks in the current; in Brays Bayou, these are created by breaks or buckles in the otherwise smooth concrete lining of the bayou or maybe an abandoned shopping cart that has found its way into the bayou. (Anglers call those shopping carts “Brays Bayou mangroves.”) Similar techniques
Brays may be a manmade waterway, but the skill of knowing how to “read water” is the same here as on the most remote, unspoiled trout stream.
Marmon’s experience has taught him the location of the bayou’s “sweet spots” at different times and water flow, and a fishing session on the waterway often involves moving from one spot to the other. That means a couple of minutes’ drive from one parking area to another and then a hike along the greenway bracketing the bayou, sharing sidewalks and trails with joggers, bicyclists, folks walking their dogs or pushing children in strollers or simply folks out for a walk along the waterway.
“I’ve never had a problem with anyone when I’ve been fishing or worried about my safety,” Marmon said, adding that he sometimes has to watch his back-cast when curious observers slip up behind him to see what he is doing.
When fish are spotted — a pair of polarized sunglasses are a crucial piece of gear — anglers make a quite approach to within casting distance to try to lay out a cast that will carefully and quietly put the fly just ahead of the fish.
“This isn’t like trout fishing, where you cast a ways upstream of the fish and let the fly drift down to it,” he said. “You aim for the fish.”
Flies for carp and other bayou fish?
One of Marmon’s allaround favorites looks like a down-sized version of a Crazy Charlie, a classic bonefish fly with upturned hook and chain-bead eyes that allow it to fall to the bottom in slight current. But when it comes to specifically targeting grass carp, he uses a fly he created.
“It’s called the coffee bean fly,” Marmon said, smiling. “That’s because it’s made from a coffee bean.”
He takes a coffee bean, slightly enlarges the “seam” on the bean’s flat side and fits a Size 12 dry fly hook into the slot, fixing it in place with epoxy. The fly, which seems to resemble a water beetle, has proven especially effective on grass carp, which, as their name implies, are almost exclusively vegetarians.
“I don’t know what they think it is,” Marmon said with a laugh. “But it works.”
While Brays Bayou never will make a list of the most bucolic fishing spots, it is a sliver of the feral in an otherwise wholly urbanized piece of Texas. Along with the fish, turtles and even the occasional water snake can be seen. Herons and egrets and even a cormorant or two stalk the shallows. Killdeers race along the bayou’s concrete apron while sharp-shinned hawks hunt overhead, hoping for a shot at a unwary white-winged dove or a mouse/rat from the greenway’s grassy fringes.
“Most people have no idea what’s down here,” Marmon said. “It’ll surprise you.”
Indeed.