Thinking about going to Camelot Bell. Anyone been recently? And if so, which of the 3 lakes would you recommend? Anything else that I should know about the cabins, food, etc??
Thank you in advance.

Ask Ken A on h ere.

I'll let the expert chime in here

The silence is concerning....

Who is the expert?

There are a bunch of folks on here who genuinely like and appreciate the owner, myself included. Nobody wants to say anything bad. The reality though is the lakes have been fishing tough for a while. Whether the economics makes sense right now is going to a very induvial decision. When those lakes were at their peak a few years ago there was no better place in the world to go catch a double-digit bass. The price was frankly a value for the experience.

There are three lakes out there. I'm certain all three still have DDs in them. It's certainly possible they could turn back on this spring.

The newest Lake Round table may yet become the best fishing lake in world in a few years. We shall have to wait and see. It's still just a hair young.

If I were going, I'd probably see if Mike would let me split my day between the two older lakes, Camelot Bell and Wolf Pack. If he doesn't have them booked there's probably a good chance he'd let you.

Good luck!

Thank you, Josh for the honest reply. I was beginning to suspect something of the sort and have yet to make up my mind. And by the way, I enjoyed your book "Lunker Lore".

Glad to hear it. Tight lines this year!

any ideas of what might have gone wrong? i was checking their social media the other day and just doesn't seem like there's as many huge fish being caught. Maybe something similar to La Perla?

I can't speak for what is happening at Camelot per se' just my experience with "Camelot" bass we have stocked at our private lake. These fish get smart fast, especially the big girls. Floridas as you know are harder to catch than native bass. It seems these Camelot bass have that trait and then some. My experience is they get educated on different baits and one reason we are constantly changing things up. We still have DD but catching one is a challenge. This is just my guess as to what is going on at the Camelot Lakes. Pressure educates these fish and it seems those fish get quit a bit of pressure.

+1

......and they get pressured from very good fishermen presenting lures in a skilled manner. Many have likely learned to not eat anything when they sense any sort of sonar clicking or pinging.

Don’t waste your money. It’s not managed like it used to be.

If you go, do not under any circumstances turn on any electronic depth finders. Fish hear it. I promise you, turn on a FFS and hammer a fish with it and you can watch them move away. Small lakes like CB have been pounded with sonar. I bet thats a problem for the big girls there. I catch more fish on Fork without running electronics than I do running them. Thats reason enough for me.

Interesting observation. Looking back at our lake only 1 DD has been caught out of a boat using electronics.. The rest of the DD we have caught have been fishing from the bank.

will never forget how I have seen either trolling motors or graphs turn a good bite completely off when I was on fish, in kayak... then back to biting a few minutes after boaters were 100 yards away... had it happen three times in the same spot... another time I was walking on high bank in camping area at monti, , looking at several spawning bass in the 3 to 4 lb range up against the cattails..they slowly swim into deeper water as boater on trolling motor approaches. They reacted to the boat from more than 60 yards away.. watched them come right to their spots after the boater was 100 yards away.

100% they are becoming accustomed to the ping from the sonar beam.

I fished with Dalton Smith, FFS guru at Ivie a few months ago and he told me 2 yrs ago he was catching fish 20' from the TM but now you have to get them to bite 60-80' away

Ken or maybe one of you others can answer this. Does FFS and regular sonar send out different "pings" or are they virtually the same?

They are completely different. FFS ping rate is 20-30 times per second. Traditional sonar is 1-10 times per second. Frequency is different as well. Traditional sonar uses much lower frequencies. The only real tradeoff is range. Traditional sonars have about 10X the range.

Thanks. That makes since as to why fish become so sensitive and learey of FFS

High Percentage fishing is on my side table, I like to check it out for sure. I need to order lunker lore.

My father-in-law pointed this very thing out about 20 years ago when lowrance was coming out with the HDS models. We were graphing less and less deepwater jigging spoon fish and his theory was that the fish were feeling the stronger ticking from the transducers.

Good info. With the way my fishing not catching has been lately maybe ill just turn everything off. Had a partner many years ago that wouldn't even let me turn on my flasher. And god forbid if I made noise with the TM.

We fished Round Table from daylight to dark and had the whole lake to ourselves. My opinion is, if you’re going after BIG fish avoid Round Table. We probably caught over 200 bass that day but only a handful over two pounds and the single largest around 6. Don’t get me wrong, we had a blast but we went for a chance to catch giants not numbers. I’m sure there are giants in that lake but the results indicated that smaller size class fish were most definitely more common. My only complaint was the cost, but I knew the cost going in. Just expected more, bigger fish that what we found. Those bass have a beautiful blue, orange hue to them and have NO quit in them. If you go without expectations and enjoy the fishing, you will have a wonderful time.