On this past Monday, one of my friends, Ted Red, left, invited me to go fishing with him. He lives along the San Saba River, 18 miles south of my ranch. I readily accepted and was treated to a real surprise.

The San Saba River originates west of Menard, Texas and flows east, through some rugged western and west central Texas landscape, to where it meets the Colorado River.

It flows through the town of San Saba and is fueled by the mighty spring in that town. Since its discovery in the early 1700’s, this spring pours out 6 to 8,000,000 gallons of water daily! We fished just below where it enters the river, just upstream from the small rapids and the setting is almost tropical, except for the Rattlers!

The river has been deeply involved in Texas history, exploration and Indian fighting. During the Spanish period, 1650-1800, there was a big Indian raid, killing all the inhabitants of an early Spanish mission and my 3G Uncle, Buck Barry, even had a good “scrape” along it during the 1860’s. History aside, it also offers excellent fishing!

Ted and I didn’t score on any of the big Catfish that the river is locally famous for, but we enjoyed several hours of steady action on the bream, small channel cats, and one, keeper size gaspergou, or freshwater drum.

The “gou” that I caught wasn’t huge, this past weekend in Lake Austin, that flows through our capital, a fisherman caught a 22.5 pound monster, but mine was keeper size and was thrown back to grow into a monster!

The next time we fish the river, we’re going to take along a heavy rod, keep the little bream, use them for live catfish bait and catch us some of the big “cats” the river is famous for!