John Botros

Twenty-Eight Years on Texas Rivers

I didn't set out to become an aquatic biologist. I was a pre-med student at UT Austin until a counselor pointed me toward a new degree — Aquatic Biology — and something clicked. In 1996 I started volunteering at what was then the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission (now TCEQ), sorting insect specimens under a microscope for a water-quality researcher, hours at a time. That work ethic got me hired onto the agency's Instream Uses Team in 1997, and I spent the next ten years in Texas water rights permitting.

In 2007 I moved to Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, where I'd spend eighteen and a half years. I represented the agency in the statewide Senate Bill 3 environmental flows process, and led field crews on the Lower Brazos River — electrofishing, seining, and a full instream-flows study covering hydrology, geomorphology, and riparian health. Around 2014 I moved into a new role, River Access Coordinator, working access points on rivers across the state. It was on the South Llano and the Guadalupe that I first really started noticing the fly fishers working the riffles — and knew I'd want to learn it myself someday.

Access, Equity, Ecology

The river access work taught me something I hadn't fully grasped from behind a data sheet: people protect what they can reach. In a state where private land covers more than 90% of the ground, many of Texas's highest-value rivers are hard to reach, which makes them hard to monitor, manage, and protect. The rivers that hold Texas's native species — Guadalupe bass among them — need all three working together: access, equity, and ecology. That belief is what this app is built on.

Why I Built This App

I retired from TPWD on August 29, 2025, and did exactly what any sensible fly fisher would do — I went to the river, every day, for about six months. When the honeymoon settled into routine, I started looking for an app to organize my own catch photos and couldn't find one built specifically for Texas fly fishers. I'd never written a line of code. By March 2026 I'd started building one anyway, and Texas Fly Fishing Journal launched on the App Store and Google Play two months later.

It had to be Texas-specific from day one — real Texas water bodies, verified Texas species, the nuances of fishing the Guadalupe, the San Marcos, the Llano — not a generic fishing app with Texas bolted on. The full journal is free, forever; Pro is a one-time $9.99 purchase that adds the AI tools.