Long-time club member Johnny Walker, will be our March speaker and sharing his vast knowledge of bass fishing and Lake Fork, the bass capital of Texas. His presentation is entitled “Fly Fishing the Largemouth Bass Spawn at Lake Fork.”Bass fishing on Lake Fork is an amazing experience year round, but the spring spawn? It can be epic! Johnny will share techniques on how to catch the bass of a lifetime on a fly rod.
Johnny started guiding on Lake Fork part time back in the late 90s as an extra when Brian Gamble needed an extra boat to help with one or two too many clients. He has ‘unofficially’ guided many friends and family members since then. Johnny says he has always enjoyed teaching people how to fish and watching their face light up when they catch that first fish or, what they consider a fish of a lifetime.
After he retired from 35 years in the aerospace industry, Johnny officially started a guide service, Red’s Lake Fork Fly Fishing Adventures, on Lake Fork, a lake he has been fishing since 1996. He holds the lake’s record for catching bass on a fly rod—a 9.25 lb. beauty. The overall lake record, which is also the state record, is 18.18 pounds, so the state record bass could be there!
“So, what’s different about me that the other 500 bass fishing guides at lake fork? The main thing is I fly fish and my guide service will be based on fly fishing for bass, teaching people how to use a fly rod and bass flies to catch large bass and, to take experienced fly fishers out for the chance to catch a bass of a lifetime,” says Johnny.
He grew up in Oklahoma and learned to fish following my dad & uncle up and down the streams, creeks, and rivers of southeastern Oklahoma around Broken Bow. One of them would carry a casting rod with conventional lures, like the old Lucky 13. The other would carry a fly rod with all kinds of strange looking artificial bugs (flies). They would wade through a long hole, each casting their own specific gear. When they got to the end of the hole they would trade off gear and fish the next hole. They would repeat this all day long. At the end of the day, they would tally up how many fish were caught on the different fishing gear. He says that surprisingly, the fly rod won the day as many times as the conventional gear.
