I've fished the playa lakes around Lubbock for a few years now but rarely have much luck. I really struggle finding any sort of cover in these ponds. Does anyone know which playa lakes are better than others?

If you are talking about true playa lakes, then you will never have much luck. They dry up most years during the summer. Fish can't survive on dry land! Great for waterfowl hunting - terrible for fishing.

Although somewhat true, this is bad info. There's a lot of good playa lakes in Lubbock that hold water year round. If you haven't tried them yet, try all the canyon lakes. Dunbar is a great one and holds quite a few small fish. I rarely see anything that big come out of any of them but there are some here and there.

Sorry, Charlie (couldn't resist), but you are mistaken. Playa lakes by definition dry up seasonally. I spent a lot of time out on playas while I was studying wildlife biology up at Tech. The water bodies you are referring to are not playa lakes.

EPA definition of playa lakes: "Playa lakes are round hollows in the ground in the Southern High Plains of the United States. They are ephemeral, meaning that they are only present at certain times of the year."

wow, way to be as unhelpful and snooty as you could be in response there dude, lmao. now that we are all fully educated on the definition of playa lakes, I cant resist pointing out that a large majority of storm water runoff lakes in Lubbock were once naturally occurring playas. the fact that they have been plumbed into a grid of pipes and pump stations witch allow the city to move water from one to the other to primarily control flooding and also maintain water levels doesn't really change that.

A few days back at Mackenzie Park I caught a 14-inch large mouth bass, biggest I've caught in a long time and the first one I've caught there this spring.

I really wish they would re-stock it with bass, they did some big stockings in 2004-05, but none since that I know of. There used to be a guy who would catch small bass at Alan Henry and then bring them back and put them in the lake there (not legal, tsk tsk, but I didn't care, since TWPD stocks very few bass in Lubbock lakes).

Bass fishing there was fun for a while, but has died off in the past 5-6 years. Back in June '06 I caught the biggest bass I've ever caught at that lake, around 6 pounds or so.

During that horrible drought we had back in 2011 a lot of the "playas" that are normally full all the time dried up completely.

I live near Clapp Park and used to love to go there after heavy rains to catch bluegill and carp that washed in through the drainage system from the other lakes that drain into it. It was always fun while it lasted, since the Clapp Park "playa" dries up several times a year (it's too shallow to hold much water for long -- hard to believe TWPD used to stock fish there).

Since 2011 though I 've never seen any fish at Clapp Park -- I'm guessing that all the other playas that feed into it dried up during the drought and the fish are gone for good, since most aren't in parks and will never be re-stocked. May be the same thing OP was experiencing, you have to check the TWPD stocking reports to see which ones have been re-stocked.

Yea, I grew up in Lubbock. Most everyone in Lubbock, or in the panhandle for that matter calls any small body of a water a playa lake. Most of them in reality are storm water retention ponds, but some of them really are very shallow 3-5 foot deep playa lakes. When I was kid back in the 70's I used to fish a lot of them. Back then the best one I found to fish was LeRoy Elmore off of quaker inside the loop. Caught mostly Channel Cats, Black Bullhead Cats "Mudcats" and good size Carp. Every once in a while we would catch a few Bass here and there, but never very many.

Picture is of me and my brother in 1978 with a stringer of Channel Catfish we caught off of Doc's Catfish Dip Bait