Anyone fish there recently? I’ve heard it’s a mud hole. Camping with the kids this weekend, and dragging the Skeeter along.

take the kids, find some sandies or hybrids and have fun

I fished there a couple weeks ago and caught a lot of sand bass on the humps

Every hump is loaded with white bass! It’s a fun lake to catch them on!

rip

When Cooper first opened I remember there was talk that it would be the next Fork-what happened.

I was thinking the same thing...

When Cooper first opened it got literally pounded. Even guides from Fork were taking clients there. For a couple of years it seemed to be a decent lake to fish but for that size lake I guess it just couldn't take the constant pressure and for some reason it just never seemed to recuperate. I kept going there for a while but it just never has been very good after the initial opening. Kind of the same scenario as Richland Chambers although Chambers seems to have gotten better as far as bass fishing recently. When that lake first opened up everyone was excited and fishing was great but it became a tough lake to fish after a while at least for me.

The Metroplex kept pulling huge amounts of water out of the lake. Water quality, never good from the South Sulphur River, became poor. I used to drive across Fork to get to Cooper. On one of our trips, probably around 2002, there were dead fish floating everywhere. Low oxygen content? I don't know for sure.

it was for years. you used to be able to sight fish and catch multiple DD's per day spawning on huge horizontal tree limbs on the edge of the river channel in deep water and also some of the best road bed and fence line fishing ive ever experienced. low water levels did it in.

Is the lake pretty open to run?

half, literally if full.

yep it was a good lake for a few years,
Low water was not caused by the metroplex, from memory only City of Irving draws water from it. The real culprit was the Corps of Engineers, whom every spring would drop the lake during the spawn. effectively eliminating the chance for fry to survive. They routinely killed whatever grass would get established along the shores or around the islands, the banks were exposed to wind and waves which turned the lake into a mud pit.

Catfishing is good at the humps and ridges in front of the dam.

Long Story. It did not die alone. It did not have a fish kill either. Fork had a fish kill in 99 and Cooper was on fire. Well Cooper was drawing no money to the state, so they had to fix Fork in a hurry and no better lake than Cooper to help fix it. Fork bounced back from a major fish kill in 2 years . And Cooper fell off after 2003.

Simple math and follow the money. At the time of the fish kill at Fork it was drawing 28 million to the economy and Cooper was not bringing in 50 k . Not to mentioned I seen TPW on Cooper at this time with the shock boat a lot in a 6-10 month period.

Well that explains a lot! Not surprising though.