TPWD Ray Hubbard Survey Report.

Have been looking for this report for awhile now. This report confirms what many of us already knew. Read for yourself the results. Our RHSA group is mentioned several times. There is a wealth of information in here. Take the time to read up. Take a look especially at the White Bass and Hybrid numbers. Not good.

https://tpwd.texas.gov/publications/pwdpubs/media/lake_survey/pwd_rp_t3200_1367_2016.pdf

Here is the paragraph with the results for Whites and Hybrids:

Temperate basses: The 2017 total gill netting catch rate of White Bass was 1.9/nn which was well
below previous sample in 2015 (9.9/nn) and below the reservoir average of 7.3/nn (Figure 6; Appendix
C). The gill netting catch rate of Hybrid Striped Bass was only 1.7 /nn in 2017 which was lower than the
previous sample in 2015 (3.4/nn) and below the reservoir average of 2.5/nn (Figure 7; Appendix C). In
Ray Hubbard, Hybrid Striped Bass reach 18 inches between age 2 and 3 (Figure 8).

It’s a slaughterhouse in the spring

I just wrote TPWD a letter with several suggestions. Those of us that have a long history on the lake knew what was happening. Now it's up to TPWD to do something. Anything.

I’m not even sure the TPWD exits anymore

They are fewer in numbers that’s for sure. We meet with them from time to time regarding RHSA stocking hybrids. And the guides meet with them also. When they write back want to request a meeting.

Need to close the creeks down for a few yrs..they will come back

Yaffe I couldn't agree more. I used to fish Rowlette creek during the spawn but can no longer do that because of the overwhelming amount of fish taken illegally. Can't shut down the creeks but you can support/encourage the game wardens to monitor the situation. They could camp put at Firewheel and hand out citations every day all day long.

I fish both the main lake and rowlett creek, the drought years were great for fishing. I think thats where you get that huge difference in gill survey captures, the fish had alot less water to roam in the drought years compared to now. I know 2015 the flooding happened around late spring in may or so, if they did the gill net survey in early spring the lake levels would still have been 10 feet low.

Now that Ray Hubbard has been at full pool for a number or years and multiple months of spillway run off, I have no doubt there were alot of fish lost down river, but its my opinion that fisherman have a VERY little impact on the actual numbers of hybrids/sandbass left in the lake.

If you compare Ray Hubbard to lakes like Tawakoni, we have almost 0 guide presence, you have hundreds of sandbass and hybrid stripers taken out of Tawakoni EVERY DAY, compare that to Ray Hubbard, I use to fish it 3-5 times a week on the main lake and would see maybe 1 or 2 fishing boats for hybrid/white bass MAX. Its majority largemouth fisherman.

Spring time during the creek run, I am at Rowlett Creek 3-5 times a week in the morning. While no doubt there is some illegal over harvesting, majority of fisherman police each other fairly well, while some of you think the sandbass get slaughtered when they run up the creek, its actually very hard to pull a limit of sandbass except on a few days and you really have to know what you are doing. I would say 75% of the people fishing the creek don't really know what they are doing and come out of their fishing session with 1-5 fish.

Sandbass spawn everywhere, hundreds of thousands of eggs, shad have been abundant, fish are very healthy, closing down the creeks would do NOTHING for sandbass. Ray Hubbard is a huge lake, and 99% of the regulars that fish the lake only fish the open lake, With it at full pool i'm sure there are plenty of places the white bass/ hybrids are hiding that never see a boat in a month.

Hi Dipson. Some valid points. But the numbers don't lie. Also look at the stocking numbers for Hubbard versus Tawakoni. I think you will see a huge disparity. The days of acres of fish schooling on Hubbard are long gone. We all have various thoughts on the subject. But when you have the numbers returned from TPWD like we are seeing. We have a problem. When prolific reproduction fish like white bass go from 9.9 to 1.9 in two years. Something is seriously wrong. I've fished the lake since '80. The last few years have been some of the slowest I've seen. Even the guides will tell you the same. And with many of us fishing year round now. And many of us sharing information. We have a pretty good cross section of information flowing. I have charts going way back. Those charts don't lie either. Whether it's fishing pressure, the floods. drought. We are in a downturn. And most of us return the hybrids we do catch. And sure we all have spurts of great days.

But it's more average days now. I'm sure this isn't the first time TPWD has seen a lake go through a down turn like this. But we have more people moving to the area. And there are a lot of people fishing the lake still. I've exchanged e-mails with some of the biologists. It took awhile to get the survey results back. Truth be told I think they did two surveys. Probably not believing the numbers. One day last year they asked J.V. and his clients to keep everything they caught that day. Talked to J.V. and my neighbor Mark and I kept and gave ours to J.V. He turned all those over to TPWD on shore. RHSA took a year off of stocking. We will have to pick back up. Somehow through better personal and State management we can bring the numbers back up. Shad aren't the problem that's for sure. Any way I'll post when they respond to my letter. Stay tuned. See you at the dock.

So for the hybrids, 1.7 isn't that much lower than the average. It's not great, but you could come up with some reasonable explanations like open dam gates. For the whites though, that's a huge disparity. I don't think you can attribute numbers like that to angling, but rather something like poor spawning conditions or low survival rates of fry. It just seems like way more fish than humans could remove with rods and reels.

I am not talking about angling, I am talking about cast netters, mostly at night.

Great info guys. I’ve always believed open water gates mixed with smaller lakes have a big impact on fish loss.

Tawakoni doesn’t have gates.

Handing out citations might help a little?! Now some jail time that’s whats needed in my opinion.. for perpetrators with 2 or more offenses in a certain amount of time?

This is a common complaint I hear everytime Rowlett creek comes up. When was the last time you have been to Rowlett creek? I actually cast net the creek for shad before dawn, 5 am, Do you know how inefficient it is to cast net Rowlett creek for sandies? You must be imagining that people are just pulling out limits of fish with every cast net throw. This is simply false, I throw a 7' cast net at least 20-30 times to get bait, I might catch 5 sandies total. In that same amount of time I could easily catch 5 sandies with lures and jigs or minnows. Most people will take the easiest route for fish, cast netting for sandies in rowlett creek is no where near the easiest way to catch them.

Rowlett creek changes every year, and especially this year there are very few spots to efficiently throw a cast net, the firewheel area alot of the bank access has been reduced dramatically, you need waders and a rope to even get to most of the productive holes.

Agreed, Dipson.

Look,there are millions of white bass in the lake. Just how many fish do you think have to come out of the creek to account for the numbers reported by TPWD? It's not possible.

The answer has to be a combination of things, but human predation has to be near the bottom.

Posted by meathauler.

I've kept a few. But mostly CPR these days.


I still maintain, it's just not significant given the sheer numbers of fish in the lake. Even if 1,000 fish were being kept every day of the spring run (it's not even close to that), it wouldn't make the impact seen in the gillnet surveys.

Lake Travis had a 12" minimum limit for a time, but they rolled it back because biologists determined it was environmental factors, not fishing pressure, that are the main controls of white bass populations.

Like I mentioned there are many possible reasons. I'll see what the State responds with. No matter what the cause. We are seeing the effects. I've fished the lake too long to not know otherwise. Ask some of the guides. They know. They are out there a lot. All most of us want is a stable fishery. I keep seeing mention of the numbers of fish. That is the entire reason for the survey. And the surveys clearly show a decline in the numbers. That's all I'm saying. It could be a myriad of explanations. But the numbers are real. Stay tuned.

Michael, I wish Ray Hubbard was set up like Tawakoni. I love your U-tube videos.

It seems like it would need to be a wide scale issue to make that big of a difference that quickly. There has been a lot of water that passed through the lake over the last couple of years given the rainfall totals. Could that have been a MAJOR reason for the decline in numbers?

I would like to see the limit numbers managed. How much fish can you really eat? (Except for the Guides, I would not want to impact their livelihood.)

Also, maybe they could somehow protect the spawn.

JLight those are two things that several people have mentioned to me outside of the Forum. The floods and the management aspect. I hope to find out more soon. Thanks.

Agree, fish gets flush once the dam is opened, just like how texoma was a couple of years ago huge impact on all lakes. It's not the fishing, it's the dams

Good open discussion post, Frank. Thanks. The numbers are definitely down and no one truly knows why. Even the experts, our lake biologists.

I bank fish and fished Rowlett Creek for many years before owning a boat 14 years ago so I comprehend, agree, and sympathize with what Dipson said. Bank fishing is tough and not as easy as many are believing, even during the sandbass run. And most days you can throw the heavy cast net until you are blue and you don't catch that many baits. There are a few bad apples in bank or boat fishing, so throw them all in the same bucket seems offensive both ways. What I've experienced is that bankers I know and met they do network like boaters to help catch fish and to protect and report illegal activities. We are all more alike than we know.

RHSA guys been chatting in our text group about the low fish counts. The best educated guess so far is the dam gates open theory by Michael. Lavon and Hubbard have been relatively high since the great flood of 2015. BOTH lakes have gates opened for long periods and that may have "flushed" many down stream.

A positive sign, I was out on hubbard 20 days ago. It was slow, water was 60f, I tried thumping down by the dam. There were small 8 to 10" sandies under my boat by the thousands and thousands! Hopefully those batches of sandies will grow into magnums in a few weeks and not flush down the gates with more rain we are expecting...