Thinking about joining the circus...

Went to the spillway Wednesday evening fished from 6:46 to dark, mainly for crappie, just like j Moe said lots of under size, ended up with 3 really nice slabs about 30 minutes before dark, lots of small shad, white with pink head tube jig seemed to do the trick fished very slow along the rocks, getting to old to navigate rocks and steps may try again in couple days, as usual j Moe was in his spot tearing up whites and hybrids.

Any reports on the spillway, was thinking of maybe trying this evening.

A little late but the fishing continues to be good despite the numbers being taken out.

We must have had a enormous amount of fish get washed down from Whitney and other lakes feeding the Brazos. Still not catching any keeper sized crappie but the COE dropped the flow to 668 today so more may start to get caught.

Lake level is 239.28 ft // 1.28 ft above normal and releasing 668 cfs.

The COE has definitely changed their approach to releasing water. I hope it's because they would like to prevent another Fishtales Video of a massive fish kill. But if we don't get more rain and bring the lake up it will unfortunately happen anyway. But at least it extends the time we get to harvest these fish before that happens. Good move by the COE

PS: Now give us our bank fishing back at Rocky and Yegua Creek Parks COE.

The Lake level is 239 ft. 1 foot above normal. The COE dropped the flow to 339 cfs yesterday.

The white bass bite is slowing down as the numbers of fish taken out is finally making an impact. I only caught 15 yesterday morning. The crappie bite is picking up, as expected, with the lower flow. But all I've been catching are undersized.

Lol.

15 in a morning is generally a pretty good day for me.

The fishing is still pretty good below the dam. The white bass are bunched up around the discharge though so it's been difficult to fly fish with the big crowds. Ben and I got lucky yesterday. The crowd was small and we got to fish our favorite spot with nobody around us. So we could drift the flies, experiment, etc. It ended up being an excellent day. I caught 29 white bass, a striped bass and an undersized crappie. Ben caught about the same, including a striped bass too.

WOW my gigantic hands make that striper look small!

J-Moe and I have been able to experiment and test flys like never before and have discovered a few new tricks along the way about the whitebass fishing in the spillway.

Here's what we think we know..
1. Color and size matters sometimes..
Generally speaking lure/fly color choice seems to follow the rule of dark colors in low light and bright colors in bright light and is a good starting point.
Fly/lure size should closely match whatever the bass are chasing.. the bass get so keyed in on a very specific size of baitfish that anything that doesn't look like it will be ignored..

2. Presentation and location matters most of the time... especially when dealing with moving water and schooling bass and baitfish.

3. Whitebass, hybrids and stripers move around a lot (usually following the shad) Most noticeable when surfacing...

4. Just because you are catching fish doesn't mean you have anything figured out for more than that moment in time...

5. Just because you ain't catching fish doesn't mean you are doing it wrong.

6. Potlicking on J_Moe's hotspot will get you a coon-a$$ VooDoo curse that penicillin can't shake off...

Glad y'all are catching. Hopefully with all this rain they'll be in the creeks this year.

And the morning time can be really good!

J-Moe - I tried to send PM but TFF blocked it. Are you aware "TFF says you are over TFF Private Topic limit"?

Howdy JILAS, I fixed it. Thanks

Any recent Somerville Spillway "catching" reports? I am pondering going tomorrow morning. Currently releasing 179 CFS. Lake Level 238.57 vs 238.00 Full Pool
https://www.swf-wc.usace.army.mil/somerville/

I might be heading that way shortly... I'll report back Tuesday morning..