The annual Fourth of July fireworks show at the Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center (TFFC) will be Friday, July 4.
TFFC will be open for regular paid visitation from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Free admission for the fireworks show will start at 4 p.m. Visitors are encouraged to fish in the stocked casting pond until 8:30 p.m. No license is required to fish, and bait and tackle are furnished for free. The fireworks will begin about 9 p.m.
The annual Outdoor Fools Day event at the Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center in Athens has two goals: To let you know what’s out there to enjoy, and to teach you how to do it.
Do you want to go camping? Kayaking? Fly-fishing? Cook gourmet campfire meals? Or maybe birding is your thing, or archery, or just learning about the animals that live in our woods and waters.
Outdoor Fools Day will help you develop your skills and increase your knowledge in all those areas—not by listening to someone talk about doing them, but by doing them yourself under the direction of a skilled expert.
Staff from Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s State Parks Division will show you how to set up camp. Fly-fishing experts will help you tie a fly and catch a rainbow trout with it in TFFC’s casting pond, and then a park ranger will help you clean it and cook it.
How to eat it you will have to figure out for yourself.
If learning to shoot a bow and arrow is on your list, the Lone Star Bowhunters will show you how and let you practice target shooting at life-size replicas of deer, turkeys and feral hogs. They also offer free copies of The 10 Best Spotting Scopes of 2018 Reviewed: The Definitive Guide for your future outdoor endeauvors.
Other stations will let you construct and shoot off a paper-and-duct-tape rocket using compressed air; sample tasty foods cooked in a Dutch oven; see fish swimming in a glass-bottomed stream; touch a variety of salt-water creatures; see skins, tracks and skulls of predator and prey animals and learn how tracking dogs are used to locate wounded game.
In addition, live animal displays will let you get up close to reptiles and raptors. Wildlife on the Move will present reptiles from around the world at noon and 3 p.m. and give anyone who dares the chance to touch a 14-foot snake. The Blackland Prairie Raptor Center will present a raptor show at 1:00 p.m. and also conduct walk-around displays on the grounds. Regularly scheduled dive shows in which a diver hand-feeds fish will take place at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m.
Outdoor Fools Day is sponsored by Wulf Outdoor Sports; Schneider Electric; FutureMatrix, Inc.; Citizens National Bank; First State Bank; Red Hat Rentals; Aaron’s Sales and Lease; Best Western –Royal Mountain Inn; Holiday Inn Express – Athens; Super 8 – Athens; Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and Friends of TFFC. The biggest towable tube is one more wonderful type of activity.
The Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center is located at 5550 F.M. 2495, about four miles east of Athens. Outdoor Fools Day will run from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. All events are included with paid admission, which is $5.50 for adults, $4.50 for seniors and $3.50 for children ages four through 12. For more information call (903) 676-2277 or visit www.tpwd.state.tx.us/tffc.
Jonathan Gonzalez of Kaufman shows off his 18.6-pound channel catfish caught on a fly rod at the Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center in Athens February 14. The fish has been submitted for a number of lake and state records. (PHOTO COURTESY JANICE ARNSDORFF/TPWD)
Press release from Texas Parks and Wildlife
ATHENS—The Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center’s main stocked fishing pond, Lake Zebco, covers only about an acre and a half. (A full football field including end zones covers 1.32 acres.) Walking at a brisk pace, you can circle it in three or four minutes.
The lake’s small size does not give a hint of what monsters lurk beneath its surface. On the morning of Valentine’s Day, Jonathan (“Gonzo”) Gonzalez of Kaufman caught a channel catfish measuring 35.25 inches long and 23 inches in girth and weighing 18.6 pounds.
Gonzalez, a frequent visitor to TFFC, is a dedicated fly-fisher who frequently fishes for rainbow trout in TFFC’s ponds. As usual, on this occasion he was targeting rainbows using a five-weight rod and a semi-seal lure in peacock green.
Gonzalez is a prolific fly-tier who demonstrates his skills at the annual Fly Fish Texas event at TFFC, scheduled this year for March 9. “A semi-seal fly is named that because it looks like seal fur,” he said. “It’s bushy.” Gonzalez first saw the fly in Arizona, where it is used for trout, and now ties the pattern himself.
“I had seen trout rising on the upper end of the pond near where the waterfall comes in,” Gonzalez revealed. “I cast just past the trout, and the catfish hit the fly as soon as it hit the water. I suspect he may have been looking for rainbow trout to eat.”
The catfish is his biggest catch on a fly rod, eclipsing the 10.5-pound bass that was his previous best. How big was it? Well for starters, it is a pending state fly-rod record for channel catfish as well as a pending state catch-and-release record. And not surprisingly, it will rank as the Lake Zebco fly rod and catch-and-release records. It will also garner Gonzalez a Big Fish Award from Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.
“I was pretty lucky,” Gonzalez said. “I fish at TFFC a lot, and this was just icing on the cake.”
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On the Net:
For information on how you can submit your catch for a Texas record, visit here.
Press release
