Hello guys.

My name is Nick and I am from Minnesota (Obviously), and the winter season is getting long up here. The uncles and myself are getting the itch to go fishing so we decided to take a trip down to Texas in 2 weeks.

We are going to fish Lake Fork and Lake Ray Roberts. I am sure a lot of you guys are experts on bass fishing. So I thought I would stop and say hello and ask for some advice on these 2 lakes?

Lures?
Colors?
Size?
Vegetation in these lakes?
Structure to look for?

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

What made you decide to choose Fork and Roberts?

you should fish Basschamps.

One of my uncles have been around the lakes and I am guessing it seemed like the popular lakes at the time.

We have somewhat of family that live in Dallas.

What is "BassChamps"?

Any other suggestions on lakes, around the Dallas area that good lakes for fishing?

Nick,

Where are you from in MN? I'm going down to Fork and Roberts April 5-9th. Looks like the timing should be great. Maybe we'll see you down there. Sure will be nice, looking out the window at 8" of new snow right now.

If i flew across the country to bass Fish I would be at Falcon, Ivie or Amistad right now.

I am from Brooklyn Park. We are all from the metro. This snow/shlush/sleet is terrible. We usually goto Lake Peppin and the backwaters down in Wabasha before the opener but with how high the water will be this year with all of the snow, it will be tough to get out there.

That is the exact time that we are going down there! We are leaving Wednesday at noon and we are staying until Monday night. Have you fished these lakes before? It seems like you have the same idea that we had.

Oh BTW, I just looked up basschamps and it seems like that is the local fishing circuit around there. Looks like they just fished Lake Fork and Fishing Ray Roberts the week after us.



Those are top-tier lakes but a little ways out of the Dallas area. I tried looking up Ivie on google maps, but it did not find anything.

I'm from Waverly and the guy I'm going with is from Farmington. I used to fish Fork in the early 90's. We were going to go to MO but decieded to drive a little further and have a shot at some Texas sized fish. Will be staying at a couple places on the west side of the lake.

Right now on Fork your going to want to find shallow flats near creek channels in the backs of the coves. The fish are just moving in to spawn, some are on beds but lots more are moving up. You can sight fish beds or go just a bit deeper, 2 to 8 feet. Jigs are always good, black/blue or pumpkin with a crazy tail chigger craw trailer. Shallow cranks or traps in shad colors can be good as well as chatterbaits.

This is the place to be if you want to see whats working. Great site full of helpful guys.

I'd skip RayBob and spend your time on Fork.

Get ready to play bumper boats on Fork this time of year...

Thanks for the information! Mostly the normal things we do up here. What size chatter bait? Jig? We use mostly 1/2 oz. I guess we will have 5 or 6 days to fish so hopefully we will figure it out.

Last year, we went to Florida and fished Lake Toho. That was tough fishing. It was extremely cold around the middle of Feburary and nothing wanted to bite. We were used to fishing with big jigs, big lures and braid up here. Down there it is small lures, small jigs (if any) and everything is pretty much weightless/fluorocarbon. Extremely different than what we were used to.




Why's that? Tough fishing out there?




Its that popular out there huh? Any suggestions on where else to go around the area?

Any suggestions on what to use on Fork?

You are driving back and forth between Fork and Dallas those days?

We will be leaving Minnesota on Wednesday April 6th and hopefully get down there next morning or afternoon on Thursday. We are trying to get on to the lake ASAP.

Come on guys help these guys out they will be spending alot of $ in your area. I have been to fork and if it where me i would fish fork the whole time and try to hire a guide the first or second day you will be there. You will also want to buy a boat lanes chip when you get there this is a must with water levels or will wreck your boat. Talk to the people at where you are staying most will help. Look for grass there is not much and if you find it there will be fish. Birch and caney are some good places to start. The baits mentioned above are all good.

My best advice is to go to Falcon. If not that definitely scratch Ray Roberts... What is your goal of the trip? A monster fish? Numbers?