I think you may have the San towns mixed up. None of the lakes around SanAngelo did any good. Twin Buttrs is almost dry, Nasworthy is low, Fisher is still about dry.

How the hell do you know, you ain't caught anything of that size!!!

I don't know why the lakes stay dry, but the San Angelo area is going on two years of well above average rainfall starting in May of 2014.

http://www.srh.noaa.gov/sjt/?n=climate-sjtmapre

Well above average rainfall yes, but when you get a five inch rain over the course of three days instead of three hours you won't get much runoff. You have to have heavy/ hard rain not this slow soaking rain to get anything done.

How often can you count on that in an area that averages 21 inches of rain per year? That's why I said it looks likely that Ivie is destined to struggle to keep water in it going forward. If two years of above average rainfall aren't enough because it didn't fall in exactly the right place and at exactly the right time the future of the lake's level isn't encouraging.

I wish it was different and that the lake would fill up. I know it means a lot to a lot of people for a number of reasons.

Evidently you can't count on it but it is the way it is. 90% of the area on the water shed is flat farm land country and that doesn't run well compared to an area that has draws and some sort of elevation change. I will also let you in on another piece of info, I have a ranch at Valera. During deer season we had a couple 3-4 inch rains over a three day period and guess how much my stick tanks picked up..... About 3-4-inches. In December we had a 2 inch rain in less than a two hour period and I picked up about 4ft in those tanks. I don't know how to explain it without drawing a picture, if it rain like a cow pissing on a flat rock it will run off. When it rains so light that you drive with your windshield wipers on delay, then it not raining very hard.

.... so the fact that the lake A.filled up to begin with... and B. Hasnt been this low except for following a drought where we received less rain that we did during the dust bowl.(real fact)

The lake is far from toast, the issue is we need large events to fill it up. They will happen just hasn't hit yet. All the tanks are brimming full we just need a turd floater to get things kicked off...

Ppl who say the lake is toast don't understand watersheds and the fact that 2 major rivers and sveral LARGE creeks run to the lake. Great rain chances for the next week.

The ppl who are saying it's dead also said hubbard and kickapoo were never going to fill either... don't be ignorant... and if your gona be ignorant, let's not post it please lol

Well heck, guess we need to keep them Cajuns out of West Texas. I will talk to my people and ask them to stay home. Haven't spent near as much time on Ivie this year as I would have liked to.

I know you fellas pain, Choke has been the only lake surrounded by rain and it's actually dropped down a few inches. This rain it's getting today will be it's first decent chance at getting a tiny bit of rise.

Well said

Even though I have a place at Rayburn and live in Houston. I lived in Corpus and fished Falcon, Choke etc for many years. I much prefer lakes such as those. I've never fished Ivie or Hubbard Creek or whatever that other large one is in the area, I prefer those type of lakes to the East Texas kind for what ever reason.

I gave up on the South Texas lakes long ago, seems like they were in always dang near dry and or near it. Same for the West Texas lakes in mention in this thread. I always wanted to fish them but every chance I seem to get, they are dang near dry.

It doesnt just take rain, it take the right kind in the right place.

I recall when Choke Canyon was built. Once they got it built, they figured it would take 10 years to fill. We had a tropical storm and a lot of rain and it filled in a few weeks. But its been low forever, same for the west tex lakes.

I hate to see lakes dry. I hope these lakes do get the right kind of rain.

Travis was 55+ feet low and it filled up. It can (and will) happen.

That's true, but the killer is that it's all fell slow. We a torrential downpour like what's happened all over the parts of the state to create runoff which in turn would fill all of our area lakes.

One of these days they'll rise.

I'm not trying to argue with you about the issues that face Ivie in terms of not enough really hard runoff rains and the characteristics of the watershed. In fact, what you have described are the reasons why I say the long-term future of Ivie water levels doesn't look promising.

I agree that a tropical storm or hurricane, or even just a bunch of storms training over the area dropping torrential amounts of rain, would make the lake rise significantly. As I see it, though, the problem would be...what happens after that? If you get a 10-20 foot rise in the lake, how long will it be before the next deluge replaces the water you lose after that cloudburst?

The lake doesn't have a very good watershed and it's located in a part of the state that is historically dry. I hope the weather pattern changes over the next several years and that Ivie comes up and stays up, but history doesn't show that to be overly likely.

it actually does have a very large water shed and it covers a large area, all it needs to do is rain like hell. This morning at 2am it rained so hard it woke me up. It's the first time through all this rain I could actually hear the rain pounding the metal roof. We need a rain like Toledo Bend got, 18in in a day or two not 18inches in six months.