Since this is the Texas Fishing Forum, I thought this would be a good place for my post. Maybe someone in Texas has fished this lake and will give me some juicy info. I'm stuck here while working in New Jersey for the next year and the lakes are beginning to thaw. It's "Derby" time! Saturday I'm fishing a tournament on a little lake that looks like a mini Lake Fork. It has a max depth of 40' and there are supposed to be bass up to 8#'s and Tiger Muskies up to 20#'s. There is standing timber like what you would find in Lake Fork and Limestone. It's only a 770 acre lake, less than a 1/3 the size of Lake Fairfield and it's trolling motor only. $110 entry, I'm going in blind and solo, I've never fished the lake before, the current water temp is 49 degrees, trolling motor only shotgun blast off. So what do you think? Will the locals spank my Azz? Or will I be the new Iconelli of New Jersey?

Wish I could help you out. I just wanted to say that the top photo is freaking amazing! Seriously. Beautiful photograph!

I pulled it from the internet.

Yankee fish like tubes.

What Color?

There is a stump to the left of the center of the picture that will have a 12.23 lb spawning on it so use a suspending jerkbait in fire tiger and twitch it by the stump at 5 foot deep and she will be all yours. Do you see it?

Make sure you use a Marinara cover scent and you can also tip it with a little piece of Calamari. Trust me it works, just ask Scagnetti.



Chose a color that looks like a Cannoli (Duh!).

Seriously - I lived in Eastern PA for five years and used to fish all the area lakes and a purple worm, fire tiger hard bait and a jitterbug was what usually worked best for me.

Do you know what a Hellgrammite is and how to find them? I used to catch anything that swam with them. They stink like hell and will pinch the carp out of you if you're not careful but man do they work.

I’m very sorry for your circumstances

I would be using the following:

squarebill in fire tiger, tomato, shad
t-rig baby brush hog in watermelon candy red, green pumpkin red, green pumpkin purple
spinner bait in white, white/chartreuse
t-rig beaver style bait in black / blue

Find the creek / contours where the waters run into the lake and find the tree / rock / bank transitions

Have fun!

Dang! You read my mind. I'm only throwing in one more bait and that's a Jackhammer with a Yamamoto Zako

Firetiger 1.5 KVD ....check!
I may also flip a DD22 in and around the standing timber ... looking for some underwater branches to roll over.

They gotta be a month behind Texas in the spawn.

Search out pre-spawn areas near drop-offs. Low & slow.

According to what I've been reading, there is also a good population of small mouth in this lake and that narrow strip of shallow water crossing the channel on the right hand side of the map is a place where they dumped pea gravel for the small mouth to spawn on. What worries me is that I go chasing largemouths and the locals rake me over the coals with big bags of small mouth. I'm not seasoned at catching small mouth. There's a good video of Ike fishing this lake during the pre-spawn

I’d use three baits. A chatterbait, red rattle trap and a jerkbait.