The corvina were brought from the Salton Sea as an a project to see if they would become viable as a Texas gamefish. They were indeed in large numbers in Calaveras but they didn’t spawn and the experiment ended. The only quirky rumor I heard was there tried to acclimate flounder to freshwater and it proved not to be viable so the brood stock was released in Town Lake. These things seem far fetched but redfish in Calaveras, and in Fairfield a long time ago stretched quite a few lines.

Back in the day they had a biologist checking creels at the boat launch, so I talked to the biologist after he checked my catch and I asked what was the deal why they decided to stop stocking the corvina which was pretty abrupt and no fanfare as to why.
Don't know if he was just tired of people asking and made up a story, or if it was legit, but he told me they (TPWD) was afraid that the corvina would escape through the gates of the dam, and get into the creek below and end up in the S A River and end up in the bay, and that their fear was they would hybridize with native speckled trout and dominate the species.
Sounded good to me so I took him for his word right or wrong.

A LOT of the TPWD experiments back in the day were feared to escape in to the SA River and eventually in to the bay systems.

I began fishing Calaveras back in the early 70's.
It was one heck of a bass lake and crappie fishing was insane.
By the mid to late 70's,TPWD was getting all into the stocking of the Florida strain bass and that was probably as far as they should have gone, but then someone there decided it was a good idea to use Calaveras and Braunig as test lakes for experimenting to see what all we can dump into the lake and see what happens.
Ever wonder where the "crappie wall" got it's name? Hot water discharge pond?
Also the killing off of all the coontail moss, duckweed, and all vegetation didn't help either.
Lots of fond memories of those by gone days!

Caught many corvina at Calaveras night fishing off the point to the right of the entrance and along the dam. Fun fish. They hit like a freight train, stripped lots of line, and maybe because I used lighter tackle, they fought up until you landed them. Also, the size of the baits those things would hit was amazing, a 12in 1lb shad wasn't too big, knew some flathead guys that caught a few on 2lb carp. Miss those nights.

Yes Sir. Those were the greatest days of both lakes back then!

I really miss those fishing days, I would routinely catch my daily 3 day bag limit and freak the neighbors out when I hung them from the tree
in the front yard.

Does anyone still catch any bass in either lake? Or I guess more the question...does anyone even try?

Sounds like another one of those "We're working on the dam, so we have to lower the water" type of answers.

There used to be an older fella here that would go flip the reeds on occasion at Braunig, he said, “you wouldn’t catch many; but if you did get a bite, it would be 5+lbs”. I don’t remember him ever telling me that he caught more than 2 bass per trip.

It’s a shame, such good looking water and the redfish just dominate over the largemouth.


I went 1 day last fall, cost $20 to launch and I caught zero fish. I also graphed zero fish, no structure in the lake, other than reeds.