6 over 6 is a good day around here. I have never fished AH, but unless I want to fish for spots, I will probably go elsewhere. This should please the locals there.
I wish the northern strain population would grow on Lewisville and the spots would go away.

On the surveys, if you believe that 95% of the fish live in the first 4-8' of water, the numbers are fine. BUT, I know differently. MOST of the big girls spawn in 15 to 20' of water. How do I know? Because you can see them down there. NOT saying the numbers are wrong, but they do not cover EVERYTHIG in the lake. MOF, MOST of the LMB and bigger spots do live deeper than 10' of water. seen that for a fact, but not always. SO, something else to think about. Hope you see my point here. Tight lines, keep safe and good luck.


Thad Rains

That's a good day anywhere IMO. But it was 6 fish over 6 lbs after 10 or so monthly tournaments.

Thanks sprigsss. It was actually 12 T's, average 6.7 fishermen at 4 hours per fisherman. Still better than a LOT of lakes for a night time working man's T. Tight lines, keep safe and good luck.

Thad Rains

I'll bash on AH, the lake sucks. Been fishing it since 2006, my biggest fish have come from there unfortunately so I do have some love for it. I only fish that lake 1 month of the year when they are on beds because that is the only time it is remotely fun to fish. Other than that, I would rather head anywhere else in Texas to fish.

Alan Henry is similar to many of the northern california lakes that have spotted bass in them.

The pattern goes like this...

Fill up the lake
Stock it with largemouth
Have great fishing for many years
Fish and Game or some misguided fisherman stocks spotted bass in the lake
Some big spotted bass get caught, people think hey - this is cool
Then suddenly everyone notices that there are thousands of 8� spotted bass in the lake
Pretty soon catching a big spotted bass is more of a rarity
Pretty soon the largemouth fishing starts to suck, except for a few fish that are big enough to eat the 8� spotted bass

In CA, on lakes like McClure, New Melones, Don Pedro, etc there are enough trout stocks to keep a trophy largemouth fishery going. Plus a few giant spots. But overall the lakes are overrun with skinny small spotted bass.

The only exception to this is Bullards Bar, which gets a ton of small salmon stocked in it. This has tipped the lake toward giant spotted bass. If the salmon stocks were to ever end, the lake would turn to being overrun with thousands of small spotted bass.

The last thing Texas needs is spotted bass in the lakes. Especially West and Northern parts of Texas. Luckily on Rayburn and Toledo bend they are just not thriving, so it�s not messing up the lakes too bad. But on clear water deep lakes, they ruin 9 out of 10 lakes.

I�ve fished every lake I mentioned in this thread and watched the progression of spotted bass ruining lakes first hand over 20 years in CA. The best thing TPWD can do is keep stocking the awesome strain of largemouth they develop through the sharelunker program and never stock spotted bass.

If they want to break the state record, pick a few lakes and stock trout every week fall through spring. It would work no problem. PK, Brownwood, Ivie. Those would all be great places to do it.

Maybe there's enough interest to restore the fishery to organize something like what they did at Lake Tawakoni, only a different concentration on species that would improve the fishing at AH. At the least, opening some communication with TP&W.

"Lake Tawakoni Sportsman's Association is a non-profit organization founded in 2003. The organization was formed by several local fisherman who were concerned when the Hybrid / Striped bass at Lake Tawakoni was removed from the State Stocking Program. Since the organization was formed, we have raised $29,000 through several local tournaments and private donations. All money to date has been spent on purchasing Hybrid / Striped bass fingerings to restock the lake for everyone to enjoy. Lake Tawakoni Sportsman's Association would like to thank all who have participated.

LTSA helped bring forth the show of support of Hybrid / Striped bass fishing from the local fishermen, this support resulted in the State putting Tawakoni back on the stocking program. LTSA still has it's annual Sandbass Tournament, and with the money raised we stock extra Hybrids at Tawakoni, we plan on stocking about $8,000 worth this year."

I almost posted the same thing last night. Maybe we need to take some of this into our own hands. Not sure how much we can get done, but I am interested in trying. If anyone is interested PM me.

I emailed the TPWD biologist a while back offereing an idea that i would do on my own time. My idea was to have a team tourney with a goal to remove as many spots from the lake as possible. The rules would be as many fish of any length as you could possible catch. We could relocate the spots to Playa Lakes in the Lubbock area to give people something to catch here in town. We would need a tanker truck to transport the fish and for the state to lift the daily bag limits for a day or 2.
His response was basically �Even if you pulled 10,000 spots out of the lake, that would do nothing to the overall populations�. So basically fisherman just need to keep the spots that you can legally keep right now.

I don�t think there is any chance we get rid of the spots. From my understanding, there were only 200 stocked in the lake in the first place. What we need is a better forage base. I would love to see a bream restocking program. When I first started fishing down there, you could see 3-10 perch in the top of every tree and bush. I haven�t seen that in 10 years. The spots ate all the bream and now the bass have no forage but open-water shad. So the bass go deep and roam around following balls of shad and don�t set up on structure. This type of foraging doesn�t suit largemouth as well as it suits spots so the spots flourish and the largemouth fade.

this grand experiment didnt work at alan henry why put them in another lake.

I�ve seen very few shad on the lake but there are a ton of green sunfish (I believe) and good numbers of bluegill.

My son throws beetle spins when I�m bass fishing and wears out the bream and small spots.

I�ve seen giant shad at night under the lights and tons of small ghost minnows, but don�t think I�ve ever seen a small shad near the surface. I have marked an occasional bait ball, but not very often.

Why not remove or adjust upward the limit on Alabama Bass and minimum size at AH? Take more out and remove smaller spots. Reduction over time and remove LMB competition.