Road Beds

Is there a method or timing to finding fish on road beds? I have spent all year trying to find bass on various road beds at Ray Roberts and have had no success. I figured Roberts is a little tougher to find them on roads because there are fewer fish relative to a lake like Fork and so many other places for them to be.

Have you been able to locate the road beds/bridges?

There are a bunch on my Lowrance map. I scan those.

I went down this road.(Lol) I never had a lot of luck with many. I don't know if there are fewer fish, I know other than texoma I have never seen as much bait on a lake as Ray Bob.

There are so may; but like any other piece of structure only a few will produce.

I like the raised roadbeds best. They display as a sharp incline, followed by the tell-tale flat surface of the road, and then a sharp decline.

Roads etched into a hillside drops off on the deeper side and may have a shallow ditch on the uphill side. This works like a stair step for the fish to move up on from deeper water.

A recessed roadbed or sunken bed is one of the best. One side of the incline may be shorter than the other.

After locating a roadbed, I invest time studying it before I grab a rod. If the road is deep enough not to disturb the fish; I follow the structure with a crisscross pattern and look for features along the edge of the roadbed that bass find usable for ambush such as: rip rap, boulders, stumps, fence posts, and bushes or tree line. Bass like to hangout on the high or low spots near drop-offs and junctures with other roads.

I look for where a roadbed crosses a creek channel which gives you a double junction. If a submerged bridge that spans the creek channel is there you have a great stopping place for bass. Standing bridges or blown bridges both are leaving rocky rubble that provides a home. Not many fisherman bother with those in 30 ft. of water.

The real producers are submerged railroads. The bed is always built up from the bottom of the lake to avoid steep inclines and when it comes to a steep point they would just cut a deep trench through the point or hill to lay the tracks. Many lakes have these deep RR ditches like Amistad.

My advice would be once you find where you think there's a road bed, pick up a Carolina rig with a 1/2 o weight and start throwing it. The heavy weight will allow to feel exactly what's there. Bridges, rocks, fences, ect. Once you know exactly where the road is fish it like any other piece of cover. Ray Roberts is loaded with fish, they are just extremely spread out. We found a school a few weeks ago and caught close to 60 fish out of it suspended in 40' of water. Nothing big but some solid fish.

If able, would someone mind posting a few screen shots, with or without additional cover on 'em?....thanks

You wanting Side Scan and Down Scan Shots?

OR Contour shots showing the different kinds of road beds? These are the only ones I have.

We must be looking at the same deserted road beds. I never have had much luck on them at Roberts either. Old foundation or hump near them seem to produce better or if intersects with other structure. I am sure there are certain ones that produce better than others. However, I haven't found them.

Raised road bed where a bridge was removed that crossed a creek:



Depressed road bed (vertical) where a culvert was removed that crossed a creek:



Slightly raised road bed with bridge across a creek still intact:

Thanks, Donald...any and all would be appreciated...Contour shots as well...this will help me pinpoint key areas while doing my map study

Thanks, Wayne...nice shots

Road beds coming off the bank and running down a gentle slope are no good. You are waisting your time unless it is the only road bed in the lake or the lake does not have very much rock. Now if this bed is lined with heavy cover like bushes or a fence crow with good trees on it then yes Bass will be there. It only takes a few minutes to look at side scan to see if there is any cover on the shoulders of the bed.



Road beds with an intersection and Culverts are great spots as they cross a ditch or low spot in the lake and will have some heights working as a levy. We are talking about concrete and rock on this type of place, as well as a raised road bed.



I will look for other examples.

These two road bed both run parallel with the contours. This provides a flat spot on a very steep slope which work as a stair step for fish to move up on to spawn.

This road bed crosses several low spots and then several high spots. It will be a sunken bed as it climbs out of deep water to shallow water especially on the steeper drops.

Very good information. The pictures do a very good job of explaining.

Wow, thanks Donald.

Great examples. Thanks. Yesterday I went back to Roberts and scanned a bunch of roads and focused on the intersections, culverts and creek crossings in a variety of depths. I could not see much in the way of fish or bait. Are there still fish there I cant see, are these structures only effective if there is bait present, etc...? For some reason I expect to see some fish stacked in there, like you would see at Fork. I never did fish any of them but would have if I saw something interesting.

Most road beds are shallow and move off into deeper water. If you find a culvert in 15 ft. of water and are trying to see what is there get away from it. and use the Side Scan. Using Sonar or Down Scan show only a limited amount of the bottom. All I need to see is one or two fish and I am going to fish it. Never pass up structure where it crosses a creek. This is a stopping place. The larger it is, the deeper it is the better it is.

For me, the Ray Roberts roadbeds seemed to stop producing fish for me 6-8 years ago. I had a handful I could go and get a few bass on almost every trip. Now they are like a ghost town. Seems the water fluctuation killed all the grass around these roadbeds, and the fish moved on to better pastures, which I have not had much luck finding!!

Try scanning the railroad bed in the Buck Creek area to see how fish relate to the bed. It has a decent drop, it is mostly raised, and seems good at holding fish around that creek channel bend. I've only caught whites the time I hit it, but I've scanned it other times and looked promising.

Thanks to everyone for input. Greatly appreciated. Redskeet100...throw a chartreuse square bill on rock in arms. It was money yesterday in Sand for fish up to 4#. Make multiple casts when you catch one. There are more! Water was 56 degrees and the fish were shallow.

Mentioning fish shallow: When I map good contours with irregular features in 15 to 20 of water; always go shallow from those on a couple of good warm days this time of year. They will move up from those irregular features to the shallows.

Excellent posting, way to start the new year...

Thanks for the tip. I just relocated to Tulsa, OK, so going to have all new challenges finding fish, but at least I will have an excuse being on new lakes!!!

Ray Roberts used to be awesome for me, but once the tourney fishing started, it seems the fish moved around probably due to the pressure, and I never made the appropriate adjustments to stay on them consistently. I still had the good day from time to time, but there were a lot more 0, 1 or 2 fish days to make me crazy.

Broken up old house foundations next to the roads, bar ditches/fence lines with timber and or brush, and the very edge of the old asphalt where it is all broken and chunky have always been good to me out there. Just a plain road bed looks promising but I don't think it is enough and rarely seem to hold fish. The very shallow flat ones can and do draw schools of sand bass in the evenings in the summer.

Now I would have fished that if I saw it!

Those that posted graph pictures can you circle what you see as fish and the specific sweet spots that you are evaluating. This is an awesome post. I need to spend more time SI than making multiple downscan passes.

Great pictures Donald. Really helps to explain road beds and helps to see travel routes. Thanks

Agreed. Thanks Mr. Harper!

That is a lot of good information. Will be trying this out shortly.

It just seems like every time I try to look deep I never see fish like I see those there. Great pic.

Great Stuff!

Drag a C rig lol, if you feel a hard bottom there it is

These Graph pics are really awesome! good to get an understanding of what it looks like on the bottom