Thanks all (Timberking, Redneck Rehab, Mikey6345, and slim1 again).

This is very helpful for me. It is hard to get a scale in my head about how big the lake is for some reason. I charted using google map's distance feature the river/bayou from the state park to Uncertain and it looked like a 6.5 +/- mile trip. That's probably at least 30 min in my boat through twisty bayou. We may do a small sight seeing pontoon on Thursday if we get there soon enough, then take a day on the bayou and a day on the lake or something...

Thanks for tips on water proof maps. I've never actually used a map (though I often have them) on the lakes we go on because it's so easy to see land marks, and we don't generally go for long enough to loose our way... but that's one reason I was getting worried about this looking at all the little paths at the north west end between the lake proper and state park.

I'll have to check out those guides and tours and see if it's feasible.

Oh, and one other question: Anyone looked up or used the "Fishing guide in a box"?
Looks like a local guide made something for that lake, but maybe it didn't work out to make more???

http://fishingguideinabox.com/

thanks.

Bump for info on

http://fishingguideinabox.com/ for Caddo Lake

anyone have experience with this? worth the cost? is this guy legit?
thanks.

Yes Paul Keith is legit. Not sure that video is worth it if you are only going for a weekend. I have it and I have fished with Paul several times and I consider Caddo my home lake as I fish it about one weekend per month on average. For me it is worth rewatching once or twice a year to make sure I keep his tips in mind.

spinnerbaits, frogs, worms and other soft plastics will be your friend for bass. I wouldn't bother bringing any crank baits except for maybe some squarebills.

This is my opinion but I think Caddo is a very difficult lake to fish. Everything....and I mean everything looks like it should hold bass but it doesn't. Again I would highly recommend a boat tour. I think your kids would really like that it and will give you an idea of the lake and a few places to fish.

Be sure and go eat at shady glade cafe in uncertain. They have great fried catfish and pretty good burgers. Tip well. They are good people.

Thanks Mikey.
I think my immediate family might try to do a pontoon type tour of the lake - not sure about extended fam. But that's good to know about the guide-box thing. It doesn't seem too expensive, but I tried to contact them from the web page and didn't get any reply - so I thought he may have not even been in business any more.

And yes, from the pictures I've been looking at, it does look like bass should just jump into the boat for you because the lake should be too full of them with all the shade and trees and such... Good to know if we don't catch a lot that they're more elusive than might be first expected.

Thanks for the tip on cafe also. It's always good to know where the locals like to eat

hi all,
well we finally went on the trip
- here is the report: (Also THANK YOU to all who said get a map/take pencil/gps etc. That lake is very cool, but very different than what I'm used to. Having a map from the state park was realy helpful and I think was a neat learning tool for the kids as I challenged them to keep up with where we were as we passed sign post. )

FIrst - lake access:
State park boat ramp was closed due to flooding and mud/sediment flowing down and collecting on it from all the rain. Not sure when they will reopen - said they will have to bring in some equipment to scrape/clear it off. So we didn't even have to try to make that trip to the bigger lake...

Shady Grove cafe was flooded at least once if not 2x this spring (if I got the story straight) and just barely reopening this past weekend. However, we were able to launch the boat from there. - first time was tricky since the courtesy pier/dock by ramp was also flooded. All four wheels of truck (2wd) were in water to get to "ramp" incline but nice hard cement and no algae so it was not slick.

Pontoon Tour:
We ended up going on a pontoon tour with Mike Landrum (Big Cypress Tours) who did a great job. He showed us around, told us a ton of history about the lake and the area, showed us a pretty cool osprey nest (happened to time it right so we got to see the osprey flying around a little (older kids' favorite part)). Mike is located right there at Shady Grove Marina and also went out of his way to help me launch our boat later that afternoon and even offered to loan me an extra kid sized life vest if we didn't have enough. All around great tour.

continued in next post...

(...continued from previous post)

Fishing report:

(Note: My understanding talking with some of the local folks is that the flooding kinda made all the fishing a little bit atypical right now.)

Firstly, I guess I have to apologize to those of you who suggested fishing for sunfish - Maybe I came off as a bit of a snob in that regard... I had no idea that sunfish could be that big/fat... The ones we usually see usually only about 2-4 inches long and 1/2 inch thick. Our Pontoon guide (Capt. Mike) and others also told me about how big the sunfish get in this lake - I guess I just didn't really understand...

We got skunked the first day (Friday afternoon) on the water trying to use all sorts of bass/crappie baits/jigs etc. (I saw some fish with the polarized glasses - but we couldn't seem to get a bite). We also trolled along with some worms on bobbers but maybe there was too much commotion on the boat and it spooked the fish.

We got a couple pan fish from the canoe dock at the state park Saturday morning. This is where we saw one of the biggest sunfish that we caught (very red belly about 6 inches long and about 1 1/2 inch thick (not sure of specific species - redbreast sunfish maybe)).

Then after lunch I took the 5 oldest kids 7-12 yrs old. and we went the other way from the day before (south) and into one of the pass throughs between the main channel by Shady Grove and the next big boat lane and found a small patch of sunfish. most about 4 inches. Kids were extremely excited to be catching anything from the boat. (Even my "I-want-to-catch-a-bass" child was happy about it). We were able to pass rods back and forth and everyone caught something. We moved out into the bigger channel ("V" maybe would have to look on the map again) and found a nice spot with some bigger red ear sunfish and some small bluegill again. The kids had been catching frogs by the water so we used a few of them as bait and ended up with 2 pretty exciting catfish catches on the panfish rig and (very small #8 or so cricket hook with pretty light tackle). Both were around 15 inches.

Thanks to all who provided info, ideas, and suggestions.

I hope we can go back there again when the water levels aren't so high.
(Canoe rentals at state park were also closed b/c of flooding and at least one pontoon tour co. said their offices were under water and others didn't even answer the phone - not sure but maybe similar situation.)

How were the skeeters? Bugs, not boats. Caddo is the first place I ever saw a Skeeter, it was a jaw dropping experience from my rental with a 7 hp monkey wards outboard.

"skeeters? Bugs,"... mosquitos (as in what should be the state bird for the Gulf coast ... they really weren't too bad IMO-- Of course I grew up in a pretty wooded area close to Galveston so we had some nasty summers where everyone tried to fog their yard and you had to spray on deep woods off to even be out side - forget swimming after sun started going down.

But they were bad in parts of the state park due to all the standing water from recent rains. On the pier at SP and out on the boat we had a decent breeze that seemed to keep them at bay. We were not fishing early morning or late evening (like dawn/dusk) or after dark but I would suspect that they were worse at those times.

You can check YouTube for videos on how to fillet bluegill. Some of them make it look pretty easy.

yeah, you can find just about everything on the tube
If we head back to Caddo, I may indeed make a second thought about keeping the panfish. For this trip, we'd already brought the food we needed for camping and I didn't really want to deal with cleaning them. I imagine it's just about like filleting any other fish if you get a big enough fish... that is primarily the issue with bluegill and other "perch" type panfish that I've usually seen in other lakes in Central and North TX. The fish are just so skinny that it's really either cook with bones in or throw back... Caddo however was quite different on that regard. Several very fat panfish along with the smaller ones.

I also hope that if we go back I have a chance to get a side imaging sonar... right now we just did it old school-- cast out look for a bite and move on if not - makes for a long day with anxious/restless kids when nothing is biting and you don't know if there should be fish there or not... I spent half the time the first day getting hooks out of trees which probably scared off the few fish I saw when we moved into the area. We tried some grassy looking areas with lures but no luck. Kids thought they were getting bites, but I'm not sure if it wasn't just the weeds on the bottom.