Lake Fork Report December 16th

The story of this past month and the entire year really, is the rain. We were blessed once again with an over abundance of water and while the lake has stayed near full, the level has been rising or falling constantly along with drastic changes in water clarity in areas of the lake. All of this has forced one to be a versatile fisherman reacting to conditions daily and sometimes hourly. First, the majority of my fishing has been done around shallow vegetation for the past month. Coontail with very small, young patches of hydrilla have been my focus, in the 3-7 ft depth range. When the water has better than average visibilty swimbaits and jerkbaits have been the successful patterns. I'm using a variety of swimbaits and the jerkbait of choice has been the 6th Sense Provoke 106x in the ghost clown color. I really like the versatility of this bait as it's able to be ripped fast or just slow twitched and is effective at each speed. On days where either inclimate weather or stained runoff has the water clarity less than average I have been going with crawfish colored lipless crankbaits and chartruesse/white chatter baits. On the lipless baits I'm using the 6th Sense Snatch 70x in a variety of craw patterns, and on the chatter bait I'm using a 3/8oz chartruesse/white with a LFT Magic Shad in watermelon pearl as the trailer. With each of these I am playing with retrieve speed until I'm able to just tick the grass without getting bogged down in it. The rod setup here is important to easily free the baits from the grass but not snatch the bait away from the fish when they bite. On the lipless bait I use a Dobyn's 703 and the chatterbait is a Dobyn's 704, both with 30 lb Braid. On these same days when I feel I have located a stretch holding fish I will Pick up a jig and work the area really thoroughly. My preferred jig in this situation is a 1/2oz MPack Lures flipping jig in black/blue with an electric blue rage craw for a trailer. This is not a slow technique by any means. I like to make short pitches and let the jig fall on slack line, be sure and watch your line as most of the bites will happen on the initial fall. Then simply shake the bait up and free from grass and let it fall a couple more times. I will make a lot of pitches to small areas if I am confident the fish are there. Use the big stick and heavy line on this application to get those big fish out of the grass. I know that's a lot but we've had a lot of conditions to fish lately. Hopefully some of this can be applied and help you on your next Lake Fork trip.

You can click on the link to my website below to view past reports, recent fish pics and other cool fishing stuff. I still have some good December weekend dates and January dates available. Now is the time to really try to catch big fish on Fork. Give me a call and let's go hog huntin on the water!!!

Thanks for the report!

Excellent job Mr. Lawson. Thanks for sharing your knowledge.

Excellent report....really good stuff

Thank you

Good Report