Well the last tourny of the year has passed for me. This one was quite the ride, literally. The first day we headed out to our first spot bouncing from wave to wave. That was a treat. I never heard my motor come out of the water before.

Once we got there, we took about 15 minutes to tie up to a tree to fish. Another wet ride as we were facing the wind head on. Then after the waves stopped coming over the bow we got to fishing. A couple of small ones and we headed to a protected part of the lake. Day one passed without catching much of anything.

Day two; my partner decided he would sleep in a bit since the sun didn’t come up for another hour. I’m more the type to get out there, and it paid off. At 6:30 I started fishing, and at 6:45 had a nice fish in the well. By nice I mean a money fish, but not big money. I caught the thing on a Jig. This was on the first cast with a lure I never fish, and by never I mean I only use them when sight fishing in the spring. But anyways, he comes out around 7:oo and I had already caught 2 more. He didn’t believe me until I told him we needed to get to the weigh in to be in the first hour. Then he said “Not again”. {I’ve done this to him before.}

We spent the day chasing schooling fish in different areas, but nothing else eventful happened. All in all we had a good time.

 Little Berkley Jig = $3.99

Trailer = $3.99

Cup of coffee to wake up = $1.07

Telling your buddy you caught a money fish while he was sleeping = Priceless

I went to visit my friend Jim Dax and we fished his private pond.
Jim has 90 acres just outside of Winnsboro, Texas with a 5 acre pond on it. He has it stocked with Florida Bass. They aren’t huge, but they are plentiful. We caught dozens of fish in a 2 1/2 hour period of time on this Thursday morning.
There are bigger bass in this pond in the 5 to 7 pound range. We didn’t find them on this trip, but we had a blast catching the feisty bass we caught. At one time towards the end, I was catching a fish on almost every cast with a 1/4 oz. chrome and blue Rattle Trap.
Thanks Jim! This was a lot of fun.

Okay, so I’ve started looking for deeper spots on the lake to fish but several fishing reports suggest using jigging spoons, tail spinners, and assorted swim baits. The closest things I have used in the past were slabs for striper fishing, Little George baits for sand bass, and swim baits for crappie. Are these the same as what the fishing reports are talking about? It’s the jigging spoons that intrigue me the most. What are they exactly talking about? Is there a brand of color I should be looking for? Any help would be appreciated.

I went out yesterday for a few hours, from about noon to 3, before the daily thunderstorms ran me off. I caught one small fish on a Fluke in about 20′ of water, using a large splitshot sinker about two feet in front of it to get it down.
Bass should be schooling pretty soon, but I didn’t see any evidence of this.
The water on Lake Fork is very high because of the torrential rains we have had in the area this Spring/Summer. Many of the locals are saying that this messes up the fishing because they open the spillway to let some of the water out and that seems to kill the bite. I am not familiar with this, but I can tell you that I have not talked to anyone in the past month or two who has had any real success.
It will all come back to life when the weather stabilizes and the water levels are back to their normal level.

At a recent bas tournament I had the opportunity to get out and see a demo of Humminbird’s side scanning technology. What can I say other than WHOA. Their pricey, but you can get a great idea of what’s down under. From the marina where we took off, we went out about 200 feet into some trees and began just idling around. The picture detail was phenominal. You could see trees, grass, perch beads, and supports for docks. At one spot you could actually pick out which post on a dock was holding fish. Simply amazing. After seeing this, I had to get one. So I am now the proud owner of a Humminbird 797 2c. Had to sell off some other hobbies to pay for it though. I’ve only had it out twice, but it has definitely shown me a few things. Other than the massive array of GPS functions and mapping views you can actually purchase a memory chip and follow the cleared boat lanes simply from the display.

Back to the side scanner. I knew where a couple of bridges were before the lake flooded and had to see what this thing had, so I made a few passes and got some amazing photos. I was able to see the guardrails for the bridge and count the number of supports. Next I started scanning around the 515 bridge looking for schools of bass by the pilings and actualy could point out which pilings were holding fish. If only I had some minnows. These things are amazing, but terribly expensive, and tricky to install. Let me know if you have any questions.

Good luck Ya’ll

I sat outside at the house Saturday morning drinking my coffee looking at the incredibly calm, overcast skies thinking, “man I wish I was on the lake fishing topwater”. So I hopped in the car and headed for the lake. By the time I made the 20 mile drive it was about 12:30 and I had bluebird skies and a constant 15-20 mph south wind. The perfect overcast topwater day was gone.

First I went south and worked a few main lake points with a deep diving crankbait and a Rat-L-Trap. No luck. So I headed north of the 515 bridge and worked the same point that produced the small schooling fish last week and got nothing. I was hungry and it windy to comfortably fish the places I needed to be fishing, so I went back to camp and took a break.

I went back out about 6:30 and went to the point where I found the schooling fish last week and caught one decent bass, about 2 pounds I would guess. I missed three others, all of them very, very small. I have switched to a medium heavy 7′ rod for cranks and such and what happens with the smaller fish is that you end up actually pulling them out of the water before they get to the boat and they are able to shake loose because their body isn’t heavy enough to allow for a good hook set. I guess it’s just the same, they get away unharmed and I keep fishing. These points hold bigger fish. I just need to find them. Next time out I will work it with a Carolina rig in hopes of better fish.

I hate to say never, but fishing on a Saturday at Fork is just crazy. There are two to three boats on every point and a frenzy of activity. I much prefer to fish during the week but it hasn’t worked out that way lately. If you can, I suggest fishing Fork during the week. There is a big difference in the boat traffic and fishing pressure and number of people in general on the weekend. I saw two different boats pulling a tuber in the boat row. Other boats are passing and there are big stumps to the right. I have to admit I have never seen that. It might be allowed but it seems dangerous to me.

I went out Friday and fished major points. I tried a Carolina rig, medium and deep diving crankbaits, a wacky worm and everything else I had, but I was unable to get a good bite.

What I did find were a lot of schooling bass about 10-12″ long. All fish I caught were on a Rat-L-Trap. In the morning I used the 1/4 ounce chrome with a blue back and in the afternoon, since it was cloudy, I tied on a chartreuse 1/2 ounce model with an orange belly and a black back. I probably have not fished that color in 10 years, but it seemed to be what I needed.

In the morning, on my very first cast with a Rat-L-Trap I caught a small bass in about 25′ of water off of a point and on the first cast of the afternoon session (after the morning storm had passed) I caught a fish on the very first cast with the chartreuse color. Everywhere I went, I tried to get the larger fish down deeper to bite, but they would not. I ended up catching 10 or so on the Rat-L-Traps but none of any size larger than about 14″.

The morning session was cloudy and ended with a strong storm coming through. I got out of the way of it just in time. The afternoon was cloudy until about 7 when the sun came out just before it went down, creating a beautiful sunset on Lake Fork.

At least I caught some fish. I would rather have gotten the better fish to bite but it was not to be. I threw everything I had at them at all depths, worked the grassline, worked the deep timber but still had a pretty good time catching the smaller schooling fish.

We headed out to the lake on Friday and got all set up around 7 pm. I hit the topwater bite in the evening for just a little while and caught two small bass in the same grassy cove where I have been fishing the evening bite.

We had the two dogs so we had a motorhome full and lots of walking and peace-keeping to do as well. It was overall a very nice weekend. Fishing time was cut a little short as you will see in the video. I spent much of Sunday afternoon riding around White Oak Branch and marking creek beds and structure on my GPS. The bites I got Saturday and Sunday were on a Rogue. I prefer the non-suspending version. I was working it and keeping it no more than a foot deep. I generally like to work a Rogue where I can always at least see the flash of it. Cloudy conditions change this of course and you have to pay closer attention at that point. In this instance, I was working the Rogue over grass in about 18 feet of water. The grass seemed to come up about 8 to 10 feet high, so the fish were no doubt coming out of the grass after it. I also fished a Carolina worm and a wacky worm through the grass but the Rogue was all I could get them to bite.

All of my topwater bites were all on Yellow Magic. I caught a few Friday evening and a few Sunday evening as well, all on the same lure.

I had the pleasure of meeting many of our new neighbors at the lake. We are the new kids in town so there are lots of new names to remember. The brotherhood (and sisterhood too ladies) of people who fish never ceases to amaze me. At one point during the storm I found myself lending a hand to someone who needed it and at the end of the weekend when I went to put my boat on the trailer and realized it was completely out of gas, a neighbor was there to help me get it on the trailer. What a dummy I was to let that happen in the first place. I don’t keep a lot of gas in it because I don’t want to have gas sitting in the tank for too long. I learned a lesson here about uping the acceptable minimum fuel level :)

I hope you enjoy the video. I will be out later this week and hope to have more fishing tales and videos for you.