Hello, pretty new to Texas from Southern California. I hope I'm not beating a dead horse here, but is it me or is lake Tawakoni just flat dangerous to boat on?

My mom was out from California, I convinced her to come out on the boat. She is paranoid and affraid to wreck or drown I told her it's nothing. So I decide to try something new (sick of Ray Hubbard, I live next to it) so I take her out to Tawakoni... I'm cruising on the north north side of the 276 bridge probably about 40mph or so out in the middle several hundred yards from shore and I see something fly by out of the corner of my eye. I look back and it was a huge 6+ inch stump sticking out of the water. I turn forward I look to the left and I see another one... So I instantly pulled back on the trottle and turned around.

When I do my turn I notice another stump right in front of me... like as if I would have slammed into it if I didn't stop and turn. It freaked me out... So I cautiously took off to the other side of the bridge, again open waters, and just felt uneasy. Then look off ahead and I see light colored waters... or something, (probably being paranoid) so I turn around and go right back to the ramp and pull my boat out and headed to Lavon. Figured I'm not ready for that lake. Is it just that poorly maintained and unmarked or what? Every lake I've been to throughout my life if you're out in open water and there is a hazard it's marked long before you get to it.

So does anyone have any tips on boating (fishing too) in this lake or should I just avoid it like the plague and it's nasty Quinland surroundings?

Any info on this would be appreciated.

I don't have much experiance on the north side of 276 but on the south side the timber runs down the middle of the lake so you have to run close to the shore to stay halfway safe. Best thing to do is get a map and take a look at it and watch out for the sandbars and long points that run out into the lake.

theres a lot of timber out in the middle on t-wok, like previous post said, best to get good map

Tawakoni is a very damgerous lake, but one tht can be learner and enjoyed. Just because it looks clear, doesn't mean that there aren't any obstructions. That goes for most of the lakes in this area. They are mostly formed in areas that are very wooded, when first created they have many stick ups that can be seen. With the thunderstoms bringing straight line winds and tornados these stickups eventually get snaped off right at the top of the water. TFF is a good place to ask about a lake you are wanting to try for the first time, the guys are very open and full of good information that could save your lower unit, boat or even your life.

sounds like you need to stay on Ray-Hubbard...
inn the open water south of 30...specly with mom come onn now you don't have another one to spare take her to the one you know ...
you just can't run a lake you never been on like that don't care how many lakes you been onn...
never asome.. accdent weightting to happen get someone too show you around first the map may show you the hazzard's but there not that good ... get a guide too take ya'll out...

be safe have fun... safty first... Tawkioni will drown you if you don't know how to run it ...

perfect example of why each lake shoud be studied and researched before you go trotting across the middle of it.

Get a good map. Tawakoni can be bad for someone new to the lake. Lots of trees in open water. Some shallow water where it should be deeper.

run the bank line- 100 yards off the bank. the middle of that lake is beyond FULL of trees/stumps.

Hook up with *Lakeguide*

http://mattsguideservice.com/

California is a lot different than Texas when it comes to lake construction. Every lake I fish is full of timber and I like it that way. I do not want to see skiiers or lake flies no where around me. If you do not know a lake it is better to get a map or a guide to show you around.

Lots of lakes here have forrests in the middle deep areas. Like they said, research a map before running in a new lake. Lewisville has some real hazzardous areas as well. You should see Fork. Be careful.

man, you shoulda seen some of these lakes a couple years ago, they were real low and trees that hadn't seen daylight since they were impounded were exposed, kinda scary to see some of that stuff 2 foot below where you been runnin wot for years.

Years ago, first time I was ever on Tawakoni, it was low. Absolutely freaked at the first sandbar I saw in an area where you'd never expect one. Also the first lake I ever saw Pelicans on.
Aboslutely freaked while watching my flasher go from 50 ft. to what looked like 0 ft. multiple times. ( Yes flasher....it was a long time ago.)
Absolutely freaked when I got down to the dam, an area that on most lakes you can usually count on being clear, and found a frigging forest!

Yea, like I said, I pulled my boat out within 10-15 minutes. Maybe I wasn't being paranoid with that light strip, probably was a sand bar.

I've heard about Fork, couple years ago heard about like 17 bass boats sinking during a tournament or something to that effect. Grapevine and Lavon are the 2 lakes I've mainly been out on. I they aren't nearly as scarey as Hubbard and Tawakoni.

Thanks for the heads up guys, I guess I'll have to do my homework.

Ya might take your boat to Travis. It's pretty deep and structure free. Good place to go joy riding without getting the boat holed.

Hey is you want to get freaked out, lost, scared, and awed all at the same time, you surely have to go to Caddo Lake. Ever hear of boat roads? And you do not run that lake without a detailed map. Spanish Moss hung Cypress trees, giant lilly pads, elephant ears, acres and acres of growth with marked boat roads cut through.
I guarantee your first trip on Caddo will be a life time memory.

Yep there are lots of trees. Here's a picture I took from a boat lane in the middle of the trees a few years ago. Your looking sorta West, finger point would be in the distance and to the left - the two mile bridge would be just out of view looking right and quite a ways off. This is almost in the middle of the lake.

Right now you can only see a few of the tallest trees sticking up.

Tawakoni is pretty safe right now. Just avoid going through the middle of the lake. When the water was low it was very dangerous because when you tried to go around the trees there were some really long sand bars that were difficult to see, water 1 foot deep on top.

That's down near the dam isn't it? Looked EXACTLY like that.

These are all marked with a good GPS system. '06 and up Navionics chip.

Just hit Joe Pool it is a good clear lake.

Fished a crappie tourney in Richland Chambers this weekend. Now that's scary!

Even Hubbard has a few trees in unexpected places. A few years ago I had my aluminum boat out at Hubbard on the SE end, launched at Heath Boat ramp, and headed full speed south towards the dam. Then hit a huge stump and knocked a big hole into my stern,
I had to take my shirt off and use it to plug up the hole so we could make it back to shore!

Wildone I still don't see the pic you posted. Do you have a link?

I was lookin at Joe Pool, I personally kind of like Lavon I've not had a problem there, it's a pretty fun lake from what I've seen sofar, saw the shad boiling the top of the waters and watching the stripers hit em, didn't have my rod with me would have loved to throw a top water out there.

One of these days I'll hit Joe Pool, but yes Ray Hubbard can be freaky too, when you are on the south side of the lake by the point at the end of Dalrock it gets pretty shallow out in the middle.

And I will also note I don't want a lake with no structure, just not at the surface of the middle of the lake haha.

I fixed the picture.

No this is not near the dam. This is back to the West past Wolf cove but toward the middle of the lake. The path through the trees runs from near Sun point toward the state park. I'm not sure if this was actually cut for boat traffic but when the lake was low it was about 30ft wide and I trolled a couple times through without getting tangled. I believe the buildings in the background are the boat slips at Anchor Inn.
If you went left from where the boat is positioned you'd be facing the Terrell pump station.

You have to be careful on Lavon too but it is normally obvious where. The difference on Hubbard and Tawakoni is the areas in the middle that you would expect to be clear that are not. Hubbard has a forest in the middle too but it is not near as thick or as large as the one on Tawakoni. I only run the east and west sides of Hubbard from the Heath point and the power plant to the dam. I do not run east to west across the middle of the lake. There are some big ones just west of the Heath ramp so keep out from the bank. One summer when the water was low and clear I seen some real monsters off of Robertson. I am talking about stumps that you could easily get out and stand on.

This thread makes me think of an old fishing story.

I used to fish Tawakoni all of the time. Gas uses to be 1/3 the price and I did not mind an hour drive to get out there. I use to troll north of the bridge for sandbass and stripers. I used to drop markers on the humps and troll over them a couple hundred yards out from the pump station.

One day one of my buddies and I are reeling them in left and right. No other boats were in sight. This other boat goes by with his motor trimmed way to far up. He was bouncing up and down severely. He did not really seem to know what he was doing. He saw both of us hook up with fish. He made a direct line to where we were fishing, dropped an anchor right on top of my markers. He basically cut me off from trolling where I had been for about an hour. I was really irritated at first. Then I decided that he was probably newer to fishing and just wanted to catch fish.

I kept trolling like I had been and was catching fish. He was sting on top of the hump and was not catching anything; the fish were on the sides of the hump. He has the nerve to yell at me that I was spooking the fish with my outboard. I understand not to troll over a school of fish, but these were spread out over about 100 yards and were 10 feet deep. I was not going to change what I was doing because this guy encroached on my spot.

At this point I decided to mess with the guy. We kept trolling. We would have a fish hit but we would not act like it hit and start reeling it in until we got right next to this guy. It looked like he was on top of a huge school of fish when he actually not on any. After about 10 minutes of this he got even madder. He yelled some obscenities at me, flipped me off, pulled up his anchor and took off.

I just started laughing. My fishing buddy was mad. When I saw his course, I thought it was even funnier. I finally told my buddy that the reason I thought it was so funny was because he was driving through a forest. No more that 10 seconds later we heard a loud bang. He had knocked off his whole lower unit on a stump in the middle of the lake.

We had our limits about 10 minutes later. I drove towards him, just on the outside of the stumps. He would not even look in out direction. I am assuming that he got back home somehow. Main lessons from this story is to not be a four letter word and to learn the lake…..buy a map.

If you stay between the bridges....

dont go to brigeport if you dont know it ,it has a hump called lower unit point(I wonder why?)that if dont know its there will eat your boat, you cant see it until the lake gets way down,anytime you go to a new lake you should have a map of it,and know how to read said map,and even then there is the possablity of floaters just below the surface that can do you serious harm,so be careful out there and keep your insurance payed up.

I miss my home lakes in NE LA...all Mississippi River oxbows. They have tons of wood cover without having all the submerged stumps.

I once scared a friend of mine to death. He'd never been on the lakes and had never been on one that didn't have submerged stumps. It was just before dawn and I gunned the boat as soon as we got outside the cypress tree line. He was scared to death and then I told him that these lakes are old Miss. River channels and have nothing submerged in them past about 5 or 6 feet deep (other than old piers).

I miss how easy these lakes were to navigate, but I do like conroe below 1097 for the same reason. It's just that conroe is a lot like a larger scale of throwing a rock in a bath tub.

yeah twok is pretty scary. its not too cool when you driving down the lake and your graph goes from reading 20ft to 2 ft in a matter of seconds and you dont know wtf to do.....

thats when I floor it, trim up the motor and cut back towards main lake FAST!!!

it is a scary place until you learn it, I learned about the trees pretty early after moving here but a sandbar not too far from wolf really freaked me out one day- glad we were just poking alone...

I have never figured out why boat lanes weren't cut and marked in more of our lakes.

• When most of these lakes were built boats traveled at 5 MPH not 75 MPH.
• It is cheaper to leave standing timber and the government is all about cheap.
• Recreation is a very low priority, its mostly about flood control and water rights.

Yup that is exactly where I was headed before I turned around. Scarey.

Has anyone ever fished Reelfoot Lake in Tennessee? It was created when the Madrid fault created a earthquake that caused the Mississppi river to flow backwards. The backwash created Reelfoot Lake. It is one of the few lakes that allow commercial crappie fishing.

The number of stumps in this lake is remarkable.

Even guys I fish with that "know" the lake well are not 100% comfortable on Twok. You should have heard all the talk a couple of years ago when the lake was down, guys kind of freaked out to discover the areas they normally run were actually giant stump fields about 4 ft under the water with the occasional widow maker about 2 ft taller than the rest.

the guy I have been fishing with, grew up on the lake and knows all those little cuts thru those forests.... he scares the living shiet out of me everytime he goes thru them Its fun once you make it out alive.... We never hit anything, but man... pucker factor to 125% !!!!!! he thinks its funny... but I am too busy holding on for dear life to smack him LOL!!!

When I first started fishing I used to take my dads stick steering boat out to Lavon at least 2 to 3 times a week. I would launch in Malard Cove and never leave the area. After about a year I got to know every stick in the cove. During the summer I was fishing a little area where there were a bunch of small trees about a foot under the water. It was an area about 40 feet wide and 100 feet long. I was on the outside of the area about 100 feet off of a bank. I heard a boat coming and looked up and saw a lady pulling a man who was barefoot skiing. I was frantically yelling to try to warn them of where they were going until I realized the lady was looking straight back at the man. I went from trying to warn them to jumping on the trolling motor hitting high and getting the heck out of the way. They came by me about 20 yards away and she didn't see me until she passed me. I'm sure she noticed the look on my face especially as I rocked in the waves from their boat passing so close to me.
After I settled down I thought it was my duty to go tell them of the danger they just avoided and point out the area of the underwater trees but by then they were headed under the railroad bridge out to the main lake.
When Bob Sandlin was down I found areas of trees that came out from points at the mouths of creeks that I had run over for years.

Welcome to Texas! Yes, the lakes in Texas were constructed leaving most of the trees, whereas in California the trees and stumps were usually removed before filling the lake, with the result that the lakes there are mainly barren wash basins. Typical example: Anaheim Lake. There may be a few stickups around the edges in some California lakes but there is little cover and structure.

But I am very happy with the lakes here, as you can catch bigger fish. Yes, I know that in modern history, the record bass have been caught at Lake Casitas, Castaic, etc., (mostly with live bait), but your chances of catching a double digit hog are greater here. So, yes, you do need to know the lake before you go zipping around. Get a good depthfinder with a Navionics Hot Map chip and it will show you where not to go WOT! Good luck and good fishing.

BTW, I lived in SOCAL for 15 years and kissed the ground when I came back to Texas.

Please catch and release the big 'uns!