Chuck, Livingston's too muddy to support much grass long-term isn't it?

Start Bowfishin

Well it is at this point but at one time it had as much grass as any lake in the state, but do to the heavy poising it got back in the 80's it has never recovered nor will it ever at this point.

bowfishin, yeah! I've framed up a platform on the front of my Nitro and hung a few lights but when I stuck my trolling motor up there the prop doesn't hit the water anymore.

Do you have any suggestions? I'm kinda thinkiing we need some a those flying asian carp in our lakes so we can wing shoot too

TPWD needs to learn to use the Carp to CONTROL THE GRASS AND NOT ELIMINATE IT,,,,AND bASS fishermen need to learn to catch Bass in open water. We caught lots of Bass before Hydrilla was introduced in Texas waters.

Just my two cents for whatever it's worth.

Government program management influenced by outside money usually results in unfavorable outcomes for the majority.

Castaic lake in California, one of the most productive big bass lakes in the WORLD, has no grass. The water is gin clear. I love to fish grass for bass, cause I love flipping and pitching. But bass will adapt, no matter where they live.

Maybe TPW will stock thousands of pounds of trout every year like they do at Castaic. The fish will adapt but the trophy sized fish will decline. Austin put out 6 sal in a year and who knows how many DD then they killed the grass and the number of giants is in steady decline, this year zero sal and I haven't heard of many fish over 9 being caught.

Actually, that sounds kinda fun!

How many bass do anglers typically catch in a day on those California lakes with no vegetation?

Oh yes, the trout do make trophies. I fished Castaic for many years. Had a lot of 20 or 30 fish days. Of course if you dedicated your time to fishing for trophies then you were fishing for one or two bites a day. I always saw more bait and fish on the graph at Castaic than any of the other area lakes that I fished. I don't get a chance to fish as much here in Texas but it seems to me that I see more bait, and fish on the graph on Grapevine, a lake with no grass that I can find, than Joe Pool, a lake with some grass. I usually do pretty well on Joe Pool. I wouldn't say I'm expert at it but I really love fishing that grass.

You're trying to compare apples to oranges.


Our highland resivoirs are mud bottom and are 30-80 Feet deep. Castaic is 330 feet deep with a bottom composition that's hard and rocky. Plus it's only 2300 acres and gets a very healthy amount of stockings of fish and forage.

No real way to make a reasonable comparison between the two...

Yea Doug R. Castaic is solid rock, almost no mud. Also the water is generally cooler than these Texas lakes.

I think some of the point is missed here.

On lakes with lots of grass, the Eco system is able to support larger quantities of bait thereby allowing for more forage for fish to eat and grow big.

In California they artificially supplement the forage with trout, for trout fishermen but the bass eat them.

Without trout stockings I'm sure the fishbowl lakes in Cali would fish similar to canyon lake here.

Where do I find the TX P&WL bulletin stating their plans on this ?