Near 5 feet at 9 p.m., near 41 by 1 a.m.
On the night of May 23, 2015, after 10 to 13 inches of rain fell over southern Blanco and northeastern Kendall counties, the Blanco at Wimberley went from near 5 feet at 9 p.m. to near 41 feet by 1 a.m. The National Weather Service logged it rising 5 feet every 15 minutes between 10:45 and 11:45, going from below flood stage to major flood in 45 minutes, and issued a flash flood emergency at 11:24. The gauge failed; USGS later set the crest at 44.90 feet and 175,000 cfs, against the old record of 113,000 cfs from 1929. Near Kyle the peak reached 180,000.
Wikipedia's count is ten deaths and 321 homes destroyed in Hays County, with the Fischer Store Road bridge gone and full-size cypress trees turned into debris. Upstream at Blanco State Park the river rose 30 feet and left uprooted trees lodged 20 feet up in the survivors; the park reopened fully on October 24. Six days after it reopened, on October 30, the Wimberley gauge crested again at 26.54 feet.
Putting the cypress back
TreeFolks has been replanting the Blanco's banks since the 2015 floods, bald cypress, sycamore and pecan at a minimum of 545 trees per acre, and reports consulting 75 landowners with 270 more applying. A 72-acre easement at Cathedral Oaks protects a stand of bald-cypress riparian forest. Hays County and The Nature Conservancy bought more than 530 acres of the old El Rancho Cima scout ranch on FM 32, with river on both sides, finalizing in 2022 with plans for a public park. In 2018 the National Fish Habitat Partnership named the Blanco one of its Waters to Watch.
Seven cfs over a riverbed that drinks
USGS 08171000 sits at the Ranch Road 12 crossing in Wimberley and drains 355 square miles. On September 24, 2026 it read 6.91 cfs, between the 5th and 10th percentile for the date; the median for September 24 is 37. Monthly means fell into single digits in the summers and falls of 2022, 2023 and 2024, and again from January through April 2026. Part of the reason is geology. The Wimberley Valley Watershed Association calls this a losing stream, where water sinks into the limestone bed and recharges the Trinity and Edwards aquifers, and tracer studies have followed Blanco water to Barton Springs. The same morning, the gauges read 7.31 cfs at Fischer Store Road, 6.91 at Wimberley, 4.43 at Halifax Ranch near Kyle, and zero near Kyle and at San Marcos.
No outfitter or guide publishes a fishing flow for the Blanco. The 30 to 100 cfs band on this page is the USGS normal: daily medians at Wimberley run from 33 cfs in mid-August to 94 in mid-May. Below it the riffles that hold Guadalupe bass shrink to seeps between pools, which is where the river is now. TPWD's advice is to check the Fischer Store Road and RR 12 gauges before you go, and its lease page notes black bass fish best when turbidity is low.
The park, the ranch, and a lot of private bank
TSHA says much of the Blanco's bank is private and the river is impounded by a series of low-water dams; in Wimberley the access it mentions is private parks and resorts. Blue Hole, the swimming hole most visitors picture, is on Cypress Creek, not the Blanco. Texas law makes the bed of a navigable stream public, dry spells included, but gives no right to cross private land to reach it, and fishing from the deck of a TxDOT bridge is an offense.
That leaves three dependable places. Blanco State Park, in the town of Blanco, covers about a mile of river for $5 a day per adult and lends rods at headquarters. TPWD's John Knox Ranch lease near Fischer, on the south bank, runs through August 31, 2027, takes an email reservation 24 hours ahead, and ends a 3.6-mile float from Fischer Store Road; there is no parking at the Fischer Store Road bridge and no free parking at FM 1492. Near the mouth, Dudley Johnson Park at Five Mile Dam, outside San Marcos, sits on the Blanco.
Park trout in winter, Guadalupe bass in the riffles
The Blanco runs on statewide regulations. Inside Blanco State Park you do not need a license to fish from shore; everywhere else you do, and a resident freshwater package is $30. TPWD's 2025-26 schedule stocked one park site with 2,675 trout across November 29 and March 2 and another with 1,425 on December 13; the trout limit is five a day with no minimum. Park rules add pole and line only, two poles at most, and no fishing from the low-water crossing, where swimmers have the right of way.
Black bass are five a day in any combination, with a 14-inch minimum on largemouth and none on Guadalupe bass. TPWD's John Knox page says to fish the faster riffles for Guadalupe bass and the pools with downed trees and vegetation for largemouth, and lists channel catfish as the other common catch. The Spanish named the river in 1721 for its white limestone banks, which is what you will be standing on until the rain comes back.