- NARRATOR: The Texas Parks and Wildlife Television Series is supported in part by Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation -- conserving the wild things and wild places of Texas, thanks to members across the state.

Additional funding provided by the Toyota Tundra.

Your local Toyota dealers are proud to support outdoor recreation and conservation in Texas.

Adventure-- it's what we share.

Funding also provided by Academy Sports and Outdoors.

Helping hunters, anglers, and outdoor enthusiasts of all ages get outside.

Out here, fun can't lose.

[theme music] - ANNOUNCER: Coming up on Texas Parks & Wildlife... - It's time to kick start this adventure man.

That's the same bridge John Graves looked at when he set off on his trip.

[water splashes] Woo!

It's such a beautiful public place that people can use, and it takes the people paddling to keep it like it is.

Oh, something rolled to your left just down there.

We are spending some time on the beautiful Brazos, getting out in nature and enjoying every inch of it.

[theme music] - ANNOUNCER: Texas Parks & Wildlife , a television series for all outdoors.

♪ ♪ [water sloshing] [birds chirping] [gentle country music] ♪ ♪ - NARRATOR: In 1957, Texas writer John Graves spent three weeks paddling the Brazos River.

He wrote about the trip in his book, "Goodbye to a River."

Today, a 113-mile section of the Brazos is designated the John Graves Scenic Riverway.

[gentle country music] ♪ ♪ - All right, Will.

It's time to kickstart this adventure, man.

- I'm excited.

Let's get these boats in the water.

- Oh!

Just take it in for a sec.

That's beautiful.

That's the same bridge John Graves looked at when he set off on his trip.

[gentle country music] ♪ ♪ Boats in the water.

[bright country music] I'm Grant Ingram.

Everything intact?

- WILL: Think so.

- I'm here with my buddy Will Stewart.

He's a high school biology teacher in Olney High School.

He's a good friend of mine.

He's a fishing guide.

And just someone I like spending time with outside.

- Been waiting on this all week.

- All right, dude, you ready?

- Let's go.

- Let's do it.

[bright country music] - We are spending some time on the beautiful Brazos.

We're putting in at the historic Highway 16 bridge and floating down for a few days.

We're going to do some camping, some paddling, and hopefully going to be catching some fish.

Got a pretty good flow today.

- Yeah, not bad.

We're on the John Gray Scenic Riverway for this trip.

And one of my favorite just real short quotes from that book is, "the hard thing is to get slowed down."

That quote is so true when you get on the river, because you are coming from your house, you're coming from getting off work.

You may have had two hours to get your gear together and get it in the truck and get down here.

And by the time you get here, it's getting later than you thought it was and your mind is just racing, thinking of all the things you may have forgotten.

Did you get it all in the canoe?

And you start going down and you round Flint Bend.

At that point, you don't have anything to do but slow down.

That just make you think that if we would all just, you know, slow down a little bit, a little more often, things would probably go a lot better.

[bird squawking] - I love this river.

It's the first river that my dad and I paddled and camped on.

So, it holds a special place in my heart.

It's what led me to love the outdoors.

Just having those experiences and sharing those memories with my dad on this stretch of water.

- WILL: Hopefully, don't have to paddle too much with this flow.

- I'm just glad we don't have to walk much.

[laughs] I think it's a special bond that you have with someone when you can get out and enjoy being out in the wilderness and being able to navigate through it together.

You're relying on each other.

You're bringing what you can to the table and hoping that it all works out.

[bright country music] Hey, I'm all for getting down river, but I'm ready to fish.

- Sounds good to me.

- Love it.

[bright country music] All right, let's get some lines in the water.

- Let's do it.

This river is a phenomenal place to fish.

- GRANT: It's bright, we got a lot of sunshine.

So the brighter the day, the brighter the fly.

- WILL: I've heard it the opposite and I've caught fish both ways.

[both laughs] - GRANT: You're all rigged up and ready to go.

- WILL: Stay ready.

- GRANT: All right, see what we can do.

- WILL: Got a little fella.

Little largemouth.

- GRANT: There's gotta be something under this tree.

Gotta be.

[bright country music] Every once in a while, Will will give me a lesson or two on how to cast, because I'm pretty terrible at it.

[laughs] Never been the most patient guy, but getting out here just teaches you that you can't rush it.

[bright country music] - NARRATOR: Further upriver, a research team is also trying to catch some fish.

[insects chirping] - Primarily the Sharpnose Shiner and the Smalleye Shiner.

It'll be exciting to see how many we get and what type.

- NARRATOR: The Smalleye Shiner and the Sharpnose Shiner were listed as endangered species in 2014.

- MICHAEL: There we go.

Probably the biggest impact that they face is a limiting of their historic range.

- NARRATOR: Dam construction constricted their range, and recent droughts have made things more difficult.

- We're trying to gauge where these fish are and where they're going in response to these variables.

- One of the big issues, is the lack of water here up in the headwaters.

Due to range declines, the only place we really find them anymore is in this upper Brazos section, which has a lot of problems with connectivity.

And it gets really hot in the summer.

Depending on where you live in Texas, water can be pretty scarce.

So a lot of the West Texas areas, the only water is coming from the river.

So it's really the lifeblood of the state.

- MICHAEL: One Sharpnose.

- NATE: So one of the things about threatened and endangered species is that they're part of broader ecosystem.

- Okay, Sharpnose 42.

- NATE: Some of these rare and endangered species can be indicators for good water quality and good ecosystem health.

If we know that the fish are doing well, we know the river is going to be in good shape.

- Flow 0.35.

The Brazos is the largest river basin in Texas.

It stretches all the way from New Mexico to the Gulf, so pretty much all the way across the state.

There's tons of different species.

- NATE: She looks pretty fat and happy.

- MICHAEL: It's pretty important to try and make sure that there is free-flowing water so that they can continue to reproduce, recolonize further upriver and keep the level of biodiversity as high as it is right now.

Come on fish.

- NATE: There's a bunch in there.

- MICHAEL: It comes down to just maintaining a lot of good habitat, taking pride in, you know, natural resources here in Texas and trying to preserve biodiversity as best as possible.

[gentle country music] [wind blowing] - GRANT: I was 10 years old when we came down on that trip.

- WILL: Yeah.

- I was fishing in the front of the boat.

Dad was in the back paddling.

We were in a canoe just like yours.

I got hung up and I didn't know it, thought I had a big ol' fish on.

But the line tightened real quick on me, and I got scared.

[laughs] I said, "Dad, I'm hooked!

I'm hooked!"

He said, "Let go."

And that's exactly what I did.

I let go of the whole rod and reel down to the bottom of the Brazos.

[Will laughs] Gone.

I think there's a calling.

I think there's a yearning in us to get out into the wild places, the unknowns, and explore.

- WILL: The land that surrounds us is interesting.

It's kind of its own pocket of the Brazos that includes all these hills and cliffs.

There's beauty in it everywhere from the wildlife that's here to all the plant life.

You've got some quick water, fast stretches, you've got slow stretches with a lot of wind.

It's got a certain ruggedness to it.

A lot of people, they get here and they think, well, this is basically part of the Hill Country.

The way it looks, the way it feels.

You got clear water, nice river, good current in some places.

Just a world away from what you see, you know, driving from DFW to Lubbock.

[bright country music] - GRANT: When I'm floating down, I'm always just amazed at the scenery, the bluffs, the tributaries, the sandbars that are shifting and moving.

And there's always something new to discover every time you come down.

- WILL: Look at all those egrets up there.

- GRANT: Those are water turkeys where I come from.

[laughs] There's an element of just the unknown, the uncertainty of what's around the next bend.

But you have to be willing to get out there and find out.

There's a respect that is demanded of this river, [rushing water] but if you respect it, it will respect you.

- WILL: Yee-haw!

[rushing water] - GRANT: Let's go.

Here we go!

Splash!

Woo!

Let's go!

Yeah!

Yeah!

Yeah!

I'm off of it.

Cool.

It's raw and it's wild and it's unforgiving, but it teaches you a lot.

I think there's a reconnect that happens when you disconnect from everything else.

You can be out in nature and rely on the river and rely on your planning and execute.

You learn so much from that.

♪ ♪ - NARRATOR: When it comes to learning about the river, conservationists know one thing.

This invasive plant is choking the Brazos.

- This is invasive salt cedar.

- NARRATOR: Brought to America as an ornamental and for erosion control, salt cedar has wreaked havoc across the southwest.

- MONICA: When it's planted along rivers or when it spreads to those areas, first, it can cause monoculture or just thickets of nothing but salt cedar crowding out all of the native plants, nothing growing underneath of it, it's really kind of just a wasteland.

- NARRATOR: Salt cedar can spread quickly along riverbanks, drinking up water and altering the flow of the river.

- MONICA: It accumulates sediment, armors the bank, the banks build up.

And this results in the channel growing deeper, narrower, more constricted.

And so we go from having the wide channel with multiple braided streams moving through this to having essentially a narrow ditch.

This change in the channel shape can really degrade the habitat for the fish and is one of the most significant impacts the salt cedar has on these aquatic ecosystems.

[bright country music] - NARRATOR: Now, work is underway to keep salt cedar in check through targeted herbicide treatment.

[bright country music] - The Brazos has been in my backyard since 1998.

It's important that we take care of these systems.

Every benefit we can to help get rid of invasive species and promote the native species on these corridors is essential.

- MONICA: Just beautiful land, beautiful river, red bluffs, just doesn't get much prettier, more iconic Texas than this, but it's also a native fish conservation area where anything that we do, has the greatest potential to have a positive benefit for the aquatic life.

- DUANE: This is a very important part of the river is this upper reach part.

This river right here will eventually end up at PK, which ends up in Lake Granbury, which ends up dumping into the Gulf.

So any time we can work on the upper part of the watershed and promote good, sustainable practices along it.

We could be helping fish in these bays and estuaries.

- MONICA: The hope is that we can kind of have a bit of a reset by treating the salt cedar, allow the river to regain some of its natural shape, and hopefully allow some of the natives to come back in.

[water sloshing] - This looks all right.

What do you think?

Catch some fish, cook some supper, get some rest.

- Sounds good to me.

There we go.

It's just a criss-cross?

- Yeah, criss-cross, easy.

You're awfully kind to help me.

I know all you're going to do is set up a cot.

[laughs] That'll work, that's home for the night!

- All right.

- Nice and cozy.

Got a nice breeze tonight.

It's going to be perfect.

I'm ready to fish.

We're in the Brazos.

Part of the John Graves Scenic Riverway.

Fish are rising.

And the sky is beautiful, not a cloud in it, a little sunny.

It's going to be a great evening.

I'm going to walk right across here to that shallow riffle right there.

Come across the bank.

Fish that slow water.

I've been seeing some risers right in there.

I don't have my phone, Will.

But if I did, I would take a photo of you right now, because that's a pretty cool backdrop.

- Hard to beat for sure.

Any time I come here and fish, I have the expectation that there's a chance I'm going to get skunked.

I'll change flies as many times as I need to trying to catch stuff.

I'll observe what's going on around and just through that observation, you get that experience.

You may see some kind of animal on the bank.

You may see a painted bunting flying across the river.

I've seen twice this year now a bald eagle down here.

And so even if you're not having a good day fishing, you're going to have a good day doing something.

[birds chirping] - GRANT: You tell me there's not an eight-pound bass just sitting in this foam right here?

Got to be.

That's where I'd be if I was an eight-pound bass.

- WILL: Yeah, right there?

That's one of the things that I like about fishing here so much is that it's always a grab bag.

Oh, man!

First Brazos fish on a crab fly!

It looks like a drum.

[laughs] - GRANT: That's what you get for fishing a saltwater fly.

Catch a saltwater fish.

- WILL: There he goes.

Oh, something rolled just to your left down there.

May have been a gar.

Big whatever it was.

- Come on now.

Oo, oh, be a fish!

Be a fish!

There we go.

Woo!

Swims like a fish.

Come on.

Come here, you little bad boy, woo!

All right, Will, there you go, buddy.

- Oh heck yeah dude.

- On the board.

[gentle music] [crickets chirp] - NARRATOR: Just upriver, folks are working hard at the Possum Kingdom Fish Hatchery to make fishing even better in Texas.

- We're at the Possum Kingdom Fish Hatchery and we spawn the fish that are stocked around the state for people to catch.

Texas relies heavily on a stocking program to make sure that there's always an abundance of sport fish throughout the state.

Many of the species that we produce, Striped Bass, Hybrid Striped Bass, are only around because we are stocking them.

It's a good-looking group of fish.

They're bigger than we thought they were coming out of the tank.

- TECH: Eight-three.

- Today we are processing the Striped Bass that we're going to use for our spawning.

Some of these fish are longer than our table.

They are one of our bigger bass species and they're fun to catch.

They put up a good fight.

They're also a very good fish to eat.

The fish that we have right now, they're in an environment where their temperature and light cycles are controlled to mimic a natural environment and to target spawning dates that we choose.

There's a little clearness in these eggs, which means that the yolk is starting to condense.

This is a fish that's probably going to spawn.

This one's going to be a good one!

After we've looked at those eggs in the microscope, we'll put the fish back into tanks and we will check them every couple hours until we see that their bellies are softening and the eggs are starting to flow out of the fishes' vents.

Once we're at that stage, we will take that fish out and we'll also grab a couple male fish and we will spawn those fish.

The eggs will stay in the incubation system for about 48 hours.

That was a pretty big fish.

She gave us about 1.6 million eggs.

It's about a 45-day process to go from spawning those fish to stocking fingerlings out.

[bright country music] We stock fish so that every angler in Texas has a good opportunity to go out and catch a good, keepable size fish on a regular basis.

I love knowing that every time somebody goes out and catches a striper in Texas, there's a pretty good chance that that fish came from our hatchery.

It's a great feeling to know that you're making an impact on fishing in Texas.

[upbeat music] [water splashing] - First time we ever came out here, my dad and I, I was 10.

We camped just on the other side of the riffle.

And it was a monsoon that night.

Our tent was leaking.

We were soaked to the bone.

We just had to make sure that our boat was not going to drift down.

- Yeah.

- That water will rise so fast.

- Yeah, it can when those floodgates open for sure.

- GRANT: What are we doing tonight?

- WILL: I don't know, what do you think?

- GRANT: There's nothing better than anything on a tortilla.

And it doesn't matter what it is.

- WILL: No, it really doesn't.

If it's clear, it's quiet, you can get some really good sleep... if things that go bump in the night don't bother you.

[laughs] Home is where the hat is.

[fire sizzling] Two of the jalapeno cheddar might be a little burned on one side.

It's all right.

[laughs] - Man, I don't know how it gets any better.

That was a perfect day.

- It was.

- GRANT: I'm excited to be on this river, man.

It's a beautiful river.

Just grateful to have the opportunity to be out here.

- I'm looking forward to that cot tonight.

That paddling... - Wore you out?

- Took it out of me today.

- You're getting old Will.

- WILL: Getting' there!

A little quicker every day seems like.

[laughs] [gentle country music] ♪ ♪ - GRANT: Didn't spill my coffee.

[laughs] There's a lot to learn about myself every time I come out here.

That's why I love being out here.

It teaches perseverance.

It teaches you to appreciate the small things.

You just slow down.

You take it all in.

You learn from it, you grow from it.

When I think about the memories that I have with my dad on this river, I can't wait to share that with my kids.

It's a generational river.

We've got to conserve it.

I want my kids to be able to come out here and bring their kids and their kids bring their kids.

- It's such a beautiful public place that people can use and takes the people paddling it to keep it like it is.

[gentle country music] This is a special river.

That's why a few years ago me and a friend of mine, we created the Brazos Cleanup Project.

It's a nonprofit volunteer effort every November to come and clean up the public access right below the Possum Kingdom Dam.

[birds chirping] [crowd chattering] - Hey, thanks for being here, guys.

Y'all know how this whole thing works today?

- Negative.

- Awesome.

So we've got the bags here, you're just going to grab a bag.

Every time you bring a bag full of trash, you gonna drop it off at the dumpster.

So, we're out here at the annual Brazos Cleanup.

We've got a ton of volunteers that are scouring riverbanks picking up trash and it's just a great day.

- We're out here cleaning up the river today.

I brought I don't know how many of my students out from my biology course.

- Smile!

One, two, three!

- It's a fun time.

They get to come be outside and see the river and hang out and win some prizes.

- GRANT: For us to be able to come out and see the next generation picking up with all the kids running around and they're excited and picking up trash and they're excited to fill their bags.

That's what we want to instill.

That passion for our natural places.

We're making an impact.

We're leaving the river prettier than we thought, which is our goal.

[bright country music] - Brazos River Cleanup!

Woo!

Woo!

- ALL: Cheese!

- Oh yeah.

- There you go.

- All right, great job today, guys.

I thank you all for coming with us.

I think what I've learned in the past four years of bringing students out here is that a lot of times, they're just not aware places like this exist close to home.

It's a very dear spot on the river to me.

And I hope that by doing this, they see that, yeah, this is a place they can come on an afternoon on a Saturday or something just to be and bring a friend.

Go swimming in the river.

Go fishing.

Take a hike.

Any of the above.

I hope that they find places like this and they become dear to them so that we can continue this trend of protecting things that we love.

[gentle country music] This river holds a lot of significance, not just to me, but to the entire state of Texas.

There's so much history right here that we just want to share and we want to make sure that we're doing our part to preserve it, to protect it and to keep it clean.

[gentle country music] This is a public waterway.

We need to treat it well.

We need to respect it.

This is our river.

[gentle country music] ♪ We gonna have a good time ♪ ♪ Really a good time ♪ ♪ Having some good times ♪ ♪ Good, good times ♪ ♪ A really, really good time ♪ ♪ A real good time ♪ ♪ We having a good time ♪ ♪ A good, good time ♪ ♪ Talking about good times ♪ ♪ Really good times ♪ ♪ Yes!

We having some good times ♪ ♪ Good, good times ♪ [upbeat jazzy music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ We having a good time ♪ ♪ Really a good time ♪ ♪ Talking about good... ♪ - NARRATOR: The Texas Parks and Wildlife Television Series is supported in part by Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation -- conserving the wild things and wild places of Texas, thanks to members across the state.

Additional funding provided by the Toyota Tundra.

Your local Toyota dealers are proud to support outdoor recreation and conservation in Texas.

Adventure-- it's what we share.

Funding also provided by Academy Sports and Outdoors.

Helping hunters, anglers, and outdoor enthusiasts of all ages get outside.

Out here, fun can't lose.