What 28 Years on Texas Rivers Taught Me About Fly Fishing — and Why I Built an App

Twenty-eight years on Texas rivers, at TCEQ and then Texas Parks and Wildlife, taught me one thing above all: people protect the water they can reach and know. I built Texas Fly Fishing Journal, a free fly fishing log for Texas anglers, so every catch, fly, and river day gets remembered instead of lost in a camera roll.

I didn't set out to become an aquatic biologist. I wasn't sure what I wanted to be, perhaps still not...

I was a pre-med student at UT Austin, struggling, visiting my counselor more than I'd like to admit. One afternoon she pointed me toward a new degree program — a Bachelor of Sciences in Aquatic Biology. I don't remember the exact words she used, but I remember the feeling: this is it. I loved being outdoors. I loved critters. And somewhere in the back of my mind, I already understood that water was the most important thing in Texas. More important than anything I was going to learn on the medical track.

That decision sent me down a road I never could have predicted. Twenty-eight years on Texas rivers, streams, and wetlands. And eventually... an app.

It Started With Jars of Bugs

In 1996, I volunteered for a researcher named Dr. Richard Kiesling at what was then called the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission — TNRCC, now TCEQ. Richard was conducting water quality research using insect light traps around wetlands. He had hundreds of jars of specimens on shelves, in boxes, in cabinets, all preserved in alcohol. Everything needed to be sorted and identified to order. Every mosquito had to be pulled out separately for further analysis.

So that's what I did. Three to five days a week, for months. Face stuck to a microscope. Working through insect identification keys. Picking through jars.

It doesn't sound glamorous. But something happens when you spend that many hours looking closely at what most people walk past. You start to understand it in a way that's hard to explain. There's no single aha moment. It accumulates quietly, hour after hour, until one day you realize the work that seemed least important turned out to matter most. That's a lesson I've carried ever since. Richard noticed my work ethic, and in March of 1997 he hired me onto the Instream Uses Team of the Water Rights Permitting section.

That was the beginning.

Learning the Machinery — and Its Limits

Terms like "instream uses" and "freshwater inflows" were relatively new to the regulated community back then. Learning the ins and outs of water rights permitting in Texas was genuinely fascinating... and at times, genuinely frustrating.

The science was solid. The process? More complicated. Working at TCEQ for ten years, I learned that environmental decisions rarely live in a vacuum. They get balanced — sometimes fairly, sometimes not — against political and economic pressures. After a decade of watching that play out, I knew I needed a different kind of work. When the opportunity came to move to Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, I took it without hesitation.

Eighteen and a Half Years at TPWD

At TPWD, I found something I hadn't fully experienced at TCEQ: people who loved their jobs. It made a difference.

My first major role was representing the agency in the Senate Bill 3 environmental flows process. The Texas Legislature mandated it in 2007: a statewide, science-based effort to set flow protections for the major river basins and bay systems. TCEQ adopted the standards between 2011 and 2014. It was important work.

What did it actually look like day to day? Lots and lots of meetings. Developing consensus on water issues is extremely time consuming. Alongside the meetings, I was coordinating field work and leading crews on the water. My primary study area was the Lower Brazos River, the long stretch between Waco and Richmond. I led the biological work there through multiple seasonal flow conditions. I spent enough time on that river that my colleagues nicknamed me "the Rain Maker." I had an uncanny ability to schedule field work during forecasted dry stretches, only to watch unexpected thunderstorms roll in and cut the work short. Every time.

What we did on the Lower Brazos was a full instream flow study, and it reached well beyond fish. Electrofishing and seining were just one piece. The study team assessed hydrology, geomorphology, and riparian tree health. We worked out the hydrologic indicators tied to riparian life cycle needs and recruitment, collected across low, normal, and high flow conditions. The report was state-of-the-art science, with meaningful, defensible recommendations for protecting the river's flows.

Most of those recommendations are still just that. Recommendations in a report, rather than on-the-ground protections for our river flows.

Measuring a catch on the board — the same hands-on habit that shaped how the app logs fish.

Eventually, the state had already passed statutes defining the flow standards, and much of that research became, as I came to think of it, "shelf art." The adaptive management phase of SB3 never got the attention it deserved. That's a story for another day.

Why Does River Access Matter for Conservation?

River access matters because people protect the rivers they can reach, and in Texas most riverbank is private land. I learned that the hard way. By 2014 or so, I needed to stay relevant, so I began investing my time in a new TPWD program: River Access and Conservation Areas. As a River Access Coordinator, I learned something I hadn't fully understood from behind a data collection spreadsheet — river conservation requires people skills as much as it requires ecology.

The work took me to access points on rivers all over the state. On the South Llano and the Guadalupe, I first really started noticing the fly fishers. I wasn't fishing seriously yet, just watching them work the riffles. It looked like the most fun, interesting thing in the world, and I knew I'd want to learn it someday.

And I learned why access matters more than most people realize.

There's a growing body of research and on-the-ground experience showing that public access directly influences stewardship behavior. When communities can safely and appropriately interact with river systems, awareness of watershed conditions increases. Support for conservation initiatives strengthens. Investment in long-term protection becomes more durable.

The persistent challenge in Texas, and across much of the South, is private land. Where private ownership often exceeds 90%, many of the rivers with the highest ecological value remain difficult to reach. And if they're difficult to reach, they're difficult to monitor, difficult to manage, and difficult to protect. Limited access constrains data collection, restricts public engagement, and reduces visibility for conservation needs.

Working with landowners changed how I thought about all of it. You can have the best science in the world. If you can't build a relationship with the person who owns the land the river runs through, that science goes nowhere. I came to believe, and still believe, that the next generation of river conservation hinges on aligning three things: access, equity, and ecology. When those work together, river corridors become community assets. They drive sustainable outdoor recreation economies, and they become resilient ecological systems with broad public support.

Where access, equity, and ecology overlap, conservation holds.

It's not a complicated idea. It's just hard to execute.

Retirement, and a New Kind of Learning Curve

I retired from TPWD on August 29, 2025. And I did exactly what any sensible fly fisher would do.

I went to the river. Every day, for about six months.

The honeymoon phase of retirement is real. I fished as much as I possibly could. Eventually the honeymoon settled into routine, and I started thinking about what came next. I launched River Sense Solutions LLC, a consulting practice that helps clients with river access planning and watershed management decisions. It's a niche built on a long career, but not one that fills every hour.

I needed another outlet.

That's when I built an app. Not because I knew how. Because I was tired of scrolling through my phone trying to find my fish.

I just wanted somewhere dedicated for my fish photos to live. Somewhere I could go back and look at a catch, remember the day, the water, the fly... without digging through thousands of pictures on my camera roll. Every angler knows this problem. A great fish gets caught, a photo gets taken, and then it disappears into the scroll, sandwiched between grocery lists and kid activities.

I figured there had to be a better solution. When I couldn't find one built specifically for Texas fly fishers, I decided to make one myself.

There was just one small obstacle. I had never written a single line of code in my life.

Building What Didn't Exist

By March of 2026, I had started building the app. By May, Texas Fly Fishing Journal was live on the Apple App Store and Google Play.

Three months from idea to launch. No prior coding experience.

I'm quick to credit the modern development tools available to everyday builders. They simply didn't exist a few years ago. Today, someone who understands a problem deeply can build the solution, even while learning the technical side as they go. I knew exactly what a Texas fly fisher needed. I just had to figure out how to build it.

The learning curve was steep and sometimes humbling. Rejected App Store submissions. Technical setbacks I'd never anticipated. Long nights troubleshooting things I'd never heard of before. But the conservation biologist in me approached it the way I'd approached everything at TPWD — methodically, patiently, and with a clear picture of what success looked like.

What the app had to be was clear from day one: Texas-specific. Not a generic fishing app with Texas waters bolted on. Real Texas water bodies. Verified Texas species. TPWD regulation logic built in. The nuances of fly fishing on the Guadalupe, the San Marcos, the Llano — those weren't afterthoughts. They were the whole point.

What Does Texas Fly Fishing Journal Do?

Texas Fly Fishing Journal is a catch-logging and trip-tracking app built specifically for fly fishers on Texas water bodies and TPWD regulations. It's the app I'd wanted in my own pocket all those years on the water.

At its core, it lets you log individual catches — species, length, gear, location, photo — and build a personal fishing journal over time. Catches are organized by trip, mapped to Texas water bodies, and stored in a searchable log that works offline. Log on the water, upload when you get home. Perfect for those Devils River trips out in the middle of nowhere.

The app includes a species identification feature: take a photo of your catch and the app attempts to identify the species using AI, with reasoning drawn from morphological cues and your GPS location.

Species ID in action — ranked matches with habitat-aware, GPS-filtered reasoning.

It also includes a full fish metrics estimator. Snap a photo of your fish and the app estimates total length, fork length, girth, and weight from the image. Any photo will do, and you don't need a measuring board. Including something in the frame for scale, like a board, your hand, or a rod butt, gives the estimate more to work with and improves accuracy. In field testing on the San Marcos River, the AI Fish Metrics feature estimated an 11-inch Largemouth Bass at 0.42 lbs and 6.2 inches of girth from a single photo. For a fly fisher who releases fish quickly, that kind of hands-free logging matters.

An 11-inch Largemouth Bass, fully measured from a single hand-held photo — no board required.

A built-in species browser covers more than 100 species found in Texas waters. Texas water bodies are pre-loaded in the location database. There's a leaderboard, a Trophy Wall, and a bulk photo import feature for getting past catches organized.

The app is free to download. A one-time Pro upgrade at $9.99 unlocks the full AI features and the complete trip logging experience.

What I Want People to Know

Texas Fly Fishing Journal is my own independent creation. It was not developed by or in partnership with TPWD, and it hasn't been officially vetted or endorsed by the agency. It simply reflects what I learned over a career spent on Texas rivers, and a decade of fly fishing them.

I built the app I wished existed when I started fly fishing. Somewhere to keep my fishing memories organized. Somewhere that actually knows what a Guadalupe Bass is, what Texas regs look like, which water bodies matter to a Texas angler.

The river access work taught me that conservation starts with connection. People protect what they know. They know what they can reach. And when they can reach it — and catch something beautiful in it, and log it, and remember it — that's when it becomes theirs to protect.

That's the idea underneath all of it.

Standing knee-deep in the San Marcos River last fall, holding a 16-inch largemouth I'd just pulled on a white #6 Blockhead popper... I wasn't thinking about any of that. I was just a guy who spent almost thirty years in Texas water for work... finally getting to be in it just for the love of it.

The app was already logging the catch.

The 16-inch largemouth from the San Marcos — logged, ranked, and saved as a trophy card.

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Texas Fly Fishing Journal is available free on the Apple App Store and Google Play. Visit texasflyfishingjournal.com/download to get it on your device. The Pro upgrade is a one-time purchase.