FYI..boys and girls big bass anglers....Martin's Map (you remember...the crazy man that spent 4 years making one map)is planning to release it's new Lake Fork "Unplugged" Subscription Based Web site in the very near future. We will be throwing in everything including the kitchen sink on this site. All the instructional information, pictures, and video that we have accumulated through the years on this lake will eventually show up here (it's a bunch).

If you liked the map, the book, and the CD then this is all of those in one and more. There will be a section called the "Learn the Lake Series" which will be a continuing education series based on fishing/learning Lake Fork designed to bring you back in time to the first opening day(12:30 AM Sept 13, 1980). The first volume of this series covers the area from the west Hwy 515 bridge and follows the west bank all the way south to the dam area. There will be future, subsequent volumes which will eventually cover the entire lake. The site will be very different than any site that I've ever seen, certainly for Lake Fork. More information will be available as soon as we have a release date (probably in April). I hope that you all enjoy it when she eventually comes off the spawning bed. Jimmy Martin

I can't wait. Thanks for your passion.

Can't wait as the map and book have a lot of info.

I think it�s great that fishing is going digital.. I think it�s the progression of a guides business. To the OP, best of luck to you sir. I may subscribe because I suck at fork...

Chris, I tell you what, I'm going to do my best to help fix that for you and anyone else that will let me help. I would say that you're exactly like the person that I custom made the first map for(that one was for me).

I felt the same way as you do when I first started fishing. I went to the lake and I bought what I thought was a map. It showed the roads really well but the lake information was non-existent. It really wasn't a map. For years I struggled with the concept of that particular map company, as well as most other anglers. I guess most people completely misread that company. They were not a map company. They were an advertisement agency that used maps as their "come on". It was their advertisement avenue(duhh...now I get it). The first map I ever made was for myself. I was fishing Lake O' the Pines. I spent probably a year putting it together and I had it on Mylar (stained plastic drawn in ink). I would take it to the diazo printer and run ammonia prints off it. Every May there was always a radio station tournament up on pines and so I ran off several copies and sat out on the side of the road and sold some. I was amazed that people would actually buy them. I ended up signing up for the tournament (I think it was the next year). The day before the tournament I caught about a nine pounder(my luck nothing during). The bait was a dark blue flaked jig with a dark blue metal flake craw-worm fishing off the bottom in about 13' along that area where the dredging eventually took place on the north end of Pines. Anyway when signing up for the tournament I got to talking to one of the radio people. Their rep thought that it would be something they would be interested in using for future tournaments. Negotiations went on back and forth. I met with a few of their advertisers and in the end it all fell through. I won't go into details but I was fairly wrecked by that(no hard feelings). I thought I'd hit bottom but I really hadn't come close. About a week later my father passed away in his back yard pouring a concrete driveway. (He was a concrete man and our front yard at one time was a batch plant). He died and then I found out what that bottom of that lake really looked like. (Sorry but this is actually the short version of how I got in the map building business. There was also an incident where I almost blew up the entire neighborhood in White Oak and one about dredging Pines). Sat around for about a month or two and decided the best thing I could do was finish what I started. I thought it might get my mind off this. I ended up having to learn to sell advertising in order to be able to afford to print the first map. Note to everyone: Pines is not the place to start a map company. It seemed that everybody thought that I had a good idea. So at that same time there were about three(maybe more)different companies trying to sell map advertising for "their" map. The radio station, the local Chamber of Commerce, the ad agency map, and a couple more rag ad (I'd like to put a couple of s's in that last word but I won't) companies. I felt like I sucked at every kind of skill that it took in order to make this happen. My point being is in the fact that I didn't give up. And similarly in your situation, you haven't given up. You've obviously found something that you really love and I would bet good money that you're probably a lot better angler than you say you are. Simply put you love it and you persevere to learn and you work to be better. I believe that's the better part of what it takes to become a great angler. I've had the privileged to know a bunch of great anglers. One thing they had in common is that they never stop trying to learn. Believe it or not some of those folks have doubts about their own abilities.

I had that same original passion myself that you now have when I started out. My passion morphed into something more along the lines of sharing information. In that way I feel that I am able to keep that same original passion for the lake and at the same time be able to pass along the help that I have been given along the way. Let me tell you if I had to list all the people that helped me during this process we'd be here a while. At any rate, I have a lot of payback that I owe for. I plan to try to make up for some of the help that I was given along this path. I plan to put forth a significant amount of effort towards presenting new information that can help people on this lake (including field surveys). I also owe people the end product on Lake Ray Roberts. If I can make this new Fork site somewhat successful then I will release Lake Ray Roberts in the same way as soon as time allows. I promised to do that many many years ago and if this works and I don't croak any time soon, it will happen. My advice for you would be to keep on doing what you're doing. Ask for help and somewhere along the way just try to "pay that help forward" if you can. If I can help you, or anyone, let me know. It makes no difference whether or not you subscribe. Sorry for the long reply.

Thank you and everyone out there.

I work with major brands and design some of the most advanced websites and web apps the internet has seen. If you need assistance in order to provide a full blown digital experience to match your passion - I would love to assist.

Thank you Dock30tv. I wish I had seen your reply earlier. I did get stumped somewhere near the last part of making this site work, however, I got lucky and found someone local that could fix the bugs that it had. The site is now up and running and is available for new membership. I do hope everyone will check it out. I am devoting some serious time to increasing the amount of information on the site. The site is at the infant stage right now but even at that, it has a huge amount of new information that is currently available on it. I think I finally figured out what anglers really want and I am focusing on showing how to fish each and every spot in intricate detail. THE SITE IS NOW OPEN FOR BUSINESS! There is a button on the opening page that will allow you to open the map for Mustang Creek and take an example map for a spin(CLICK HERE FOR A PEEK AT WHAT MEMBERSHIP REALLY LOOKS LIKE). I would suggest you open one of the open able blue buttons on that Mustang Creek page and look it over. Not all buttons on the page will open for non-members but there are enough of them that will open to give people an idea as to the final look of the site. I do hope people like it. Thank you for your comment.

Am I missing the website somewhere tried clicking on the click here link nothing!

You should be able to get to it by typing in https://www.lakeforkmaps.com
I will re-do that link. I may have sent it to you without the "S" in there since it is a secure site. Thanks, sorry to be so late sending a reply. I just didn't see the note.

lake fork unplugged site

Jimmy

Picture taken of Pope's Landing back about 1983 by David Kelly.
Lake Fork Unplugged
jimmymartin@martinsmap.com