Launched from Westberry landing this past Saturday morning (24th) for my first experience on Lake Palestine, and my lord, I've never seen such a minefield of stumps and timber. We took my buddies havoc with a mud motor instead of my stratus fiberglass and I'm so glad we did. We spent all morning hitting stumps and shallow water. Went down to the villages to check it out and then back north before cutting over to the 315 bridge. We made it to the bridge after beating ourselves up in the stump field and having to push ourselves off some sandbars we got stuck on.

I've never been on Palestine before, but I know it can't be as difficult as we made it. I live in Noonday so I would love to figure out a way to fish the north end because as a predominately crappie and catfish fisherman I was salivating at all of the structure, but I don't even know where to go much less how to get there. Lake seemed a little low so that might have made it worse, but I have no experience so I could be wrong.

Should I look into an aluminum boat of some variety if this will be the majority of my fishing? I have a 2014 Stratus 176 with a 75 HP on it, but seems like I'm just begging to tear up something running at even an idle out there. In fact, I'm not even sure I could launch at Westberry with my current set up

Tom Mayne's map chip is a big help. Though from Westberry you can idle/run the powerline to the kickapoo side. There is an island that you have to go around though

yeah, we did that on the way back, but I'm not sure it was a whole lot better haha.

I'm thinking about getting on Mayne's schedule for a trip though. Figure it will be helpful to watch how he gets around

No need to schedule a trip with him to get the map chip, you can just buy it on his site. But i'm sure a trip would be very beneficial as well

If I lived on or fished Palestine primarily, I would make an appointment with Toledo fiberglass and just go ahead and get the gorilla hull installed.....maybe get my transom reinforced too, and have a spare prop

Thanks for the heads up about them. I've never heard of them, but a quick look at their site looks promising. I'm probably just more nervous than I should be about things, but I have never seen such a large lake have so much danger. I've fished lakes that are just as stumpy in my native MS, but they were smaller and you could get around them in a jon boat.

Certainly trying to avoid tearing up my hull or motor. Looking into some variety of a hydraulic jack plate. Tearing up a prop is a lot less of a worry than tearing up a lower unit.

across from the Villages is timber and you can catch crappie there and not tear up your boat