No once your on the lake your fine. Just be sure and stay to the side of the ramp thats near the pier and don't put the motor all the way down when backing out. Don marked the lane with some jugs so you should be able to tell where it is. Once your boat is touching the trailer your transome is over about four feet of water so you can trim down to push up on the trailer.

i ran those juglines at daylight they needed to be re-baited

Thanks for the help. I am sure everyone appreicates the hard work yall did this weekend.

I noticed early yesterday morning where several people called George out for being registered under the name mexntex and being certain of it. Now its all gone and George-fastguy is still on and I do believe he is owed an apology from the know it all finger pointers, who in fact knew nothing but acted like a bunch of little junior high girls.

I didn't understand that yesterday either. What did George ever do to anyone and where did that come from?

That is good........You go Jackie!!!!

Saturday three guys left Mike with a $150 cash fuel donation. I believe two others posting here are sending Mike checks for $50 each.

Am I understanding it correctly that the campground ramp is far less expensive to make serviceable than is the old store ramp? If so, boy am I surprised at that conclusion, I thought that ramp was far shallower.

I'm for getting one ramp serviceable first.

Using the south ramp, north pavement line and nearly the corner of the dock, trolling NW of the box corner, I tried a departure over the berm on that side and got out by holding my trolling motor prop just below the water level. I came back in through the groove Daune & I made earlier in the day. So for now at this lake level, I can get in and out through two ways. I think that NW angle is actually slightly better than the second we worked to open up.

I'll post some photos of the (south ramp, south side) access lane Duane, myself and Vaughn improved Saturday. We dropped three floats in the water, stay between the dock and the floats, and crowd the float side. At the current water level there is about a knee's depth in the groove. Using a trolling motor to turn in the blow hole at the end of the pavement, and troll yourself out to 5 ft water. This works best if you just have the driver's weight in the boat, then you come back to the ladder to pick up your buddy's weight.

The center float has some very large jagged rocks sticking up to within a knees distance (~18") from the current surface. If your metal prop hits one, kiss that blade goodbye. If you run over that center float, expect to ruin a prop. Instead use your trolling motor to leave and approach the ramp. (trolling props cost $25).

The stump at the ladder is believed to be Black Oak, and would not yield to a wrecking bar. It now has two PVC pipes with two markers nailed into either side of the stump. You can pass either side of the two markers. Right side of these markers seems a tad deeper, but no more than a whole 0.1 to 0.2 ft deeper.

To move silt with the Park's portable pump we need 50-100 ft of 3" fire hose and most importantly a nozzle so we can get some velocity from the hose end. Anybody got or can you borrow a 3" fire hose nozzle or a couple lengths of 3" fire hose?

What happened? Dang, I miss out on all the name calling - sounds like some good work is getting done, though. I hope Don is putting together a scrapbook to include pictures and a lot of the posts from here.

let me check and see what i can find. i think we have some old hose laying around the fire house but i think it is 3and1/2 and maybe and old nozzle as well. working long hours right now at the job so it might be a day or three. if i can get them would need to return them when finished.

I wonder how low the lake has to get before TXU (or formerly known as or whatever it is) cannot pump water into their intake unit and therefore have to supplement from the Trinity?

The Trinity pumps cannot bring the level up, they can only maintain the current level due to the high evaporation rate.
I wish they would turn them on but I have been told they have already used up the water budget for this year.

Hey Vaughn...if you are still going out Saturday morning...I would like to tag along...send me a pm. I can help move some rocks around.

I've asked if somebody at "TXU?" knows the level at which the station pumps start to have issues, but got nothing so far.

Had we been smart this summer we should have suggested to "TXU?" spend the summer pumping budget instead to alter the ramps deeper into the lake. A ramp extension would be a proactive solution that would work for years and years of pumping and pump maintenance budget. However they did not need to be pumping as much water as they were, these stations are clearly operationg just fine even at the lowest levels we have seen earlier this year.

In a very dry year "TXU?" will still have to pump some water up to offset the salt water accommulation build up. They have to be purging a modest water flow over the dam to cap the salt build up in the lake. Based on cooling tower type system experiences I would expect that purge flow to be need 3-10% of the evaporation rate. Mike Kleinert thinks the lake drops about 1-2" per week, I quessed 0.1" to 1" a day. Both seem real high when I run some numbers, right now I am guessing based upon my guess-timate of the Trinty pumped flow being about 250 gpm. Then not quite having enough flow to hold the lake level this summer, that the lake evaporation rate cannot be much more than about 0.04 inches per week. They are probably purging salts back into the Trinity somehow (or the dam is seeping) about 7-24 gpm of salty water. Then rain or the pumps have to add this purge flow water to the lake over some time window.

Does anybody have a good eye for open water flowing estimates. Any fireman or water or waste water plant guys among us, what is your Trinty water inflow rate estimate?

Don, I spoke to someone at the park this afternoon and the area TPWD supervisor was out to look over the ramps and they are working on a plan. No news yet but at least the right people are taking a good look at the situation.

Might I recommend:
1. we drop a diesel donation at the front gate, use the camping envelop if the office is closed, and label it instead of a camp site number for the "diesel fuel fund", and/or leave checks made out to "Cory Vinson"
2. try to bring as much bodily water to the lake as you can.
3. Pray for rain at the water's edge before unloading.
Fairfield Launch and loading SUGGESTIONS...d Rock Chuckers

I don't think this plan had anything to do with Cory, it sounded like a TPWD plan but she wouldn't tell me what they had in mind. She just said there were a lot of things in the works and if it works out then we will not have to worry about low water any more.

Did he wet a swimming trunk or set of pants?

i have herd talk of a slab being poured on an existing ramp. don't remember where and using a cat to push the concrete slab down the ramp and into the water thus making the ramp longer and extend futher into the lake. but this does not get rid of the big hump that the boat must nagavitate over to get ot deep water.

they did that at lake athens and i think it was easier said than done. I dont think there was a berm like fairfield has either.

Under that middle marker buoy there are 3 rocks or broken off concrete slabs that are so big they would never let a slab slide under or over them. They are about 30" across, at least 15" thick and are standing almost up on their ends. They are so heavy I could not even get them to wiggle in place. Where they sit they actually are preventing the prop wash from pushing that berm area further back. IMHO, no new concrete slab is going to slide under or over them.

Also guys the ramp was laid in two concrete slab widths. From what I can tell from tapping around with that heavy metal wrecking bar the dam side slab goes out beyond the plastic pole and dock sign markers about another 6 feet (~third vertical board lakeside of the metal sign is about where the wrecking bar drop lost contact with a firm surface). The silt on top of that slab gets so thick with clay that far out it halted the wrecking bar penetrations, the slab might not even end there. Sorry I did not think to go looking for a blow hole off the end of that slab.

However the slab on the dock side of the ramp seems to be shorter or broken off at about that dock sign position. (Sorry I forgot to feel for a jagged edge.) There is a deep blow hole at the end of this slab and those big rocks we found are pretty well centered for the south slab's width. Those rocks could be parts of a broken off slab section from the south side.

Unless you would like a prop insurance claim, do not run a metal prop over that middle buoy. Pull your trolling motors up so they just see enough water to get by. The top of those rock tips are about 18" below the surface right now (about top of your knee with my foot flat on the top most point I found). [img:left]http://us.a2.yahoofs.com/groups/g_hr_21726398/bfbb/__hr_/720a.jpg?grwJz.IBmYVfgMBY[/img]
[img:left]http://us.a2.yahoofs.com/groups/g_hr_21726398/bfbb/__hr_/d479.jpg?grwJz.IB.MNc9ycI[/img]
[img:left]http://us.a2.yahoofs.com/groups/g_hr_21726398/bfbb/__hr_/8aa4.jpg?grwJz.IB2npaYSDe[/img]

i rembember fishing the lake in the late 70's and early 80's and never had a problem getting the boat in the water. are these concrete chunks part of a ramp that went into the water futher then. is this part of a broken ramp? don't know just asking. if not where did they come from?

From what I understand reading this manuscript, they're there to help the silt build-up....

Well, we went yesterday and all I can say is wow. We took my buddies jon boat to make sure we could launch and look at the ramp before I drag mine down there 2 1/2 hours. We probably caught around 30 fish. Had a few lmb upto 5#s and then alot of rat reds with 5 keepers. Biggest were 31" and 34". I lost a pig at the end. Got me wrapped up in a cable and broke me off. I was sick. First experience with redfish was definately an a+

Sounds like we have another new Fairfield angler, good going David!!

do you think you could get your bassboat in the lake