Rhodes is very low. Went out there last week and caught two or three dinks in the back creek using a red shad power worm. As far as water level goes, black creek is in the best shape but even its pretty low. You can walk on the peninsula for a good hundred yards out. Clear lake is pretty low and I havent had much luck there lately. Idk about cottonwood. Dan's pond is really low but I caught four out there last month on the dam.

hey davidsonbasser, my signature is from Rhodes. Might be the same one you caught. I caught her in the corner, where the dam and the barbwire fence meet past the drainage. It was a blast fighting her on spinning setup. Senko wacky rigged did it. What did you catch her on?

I caught her on a electric grape power worm. She was in the same spot if I am reading your post correctly. There is that huge dead tree by the shoreline...she was almost directly out from there. Caught her back in August of 2011. I hope she is still out there. We should go and see if we can catch her.

What lake was the picture taken at? Mainly fish ray roberts but that looks like an awesome place to take kids camping?

My sig picture is from Clear Lake, first cast ever with a jig and I got her. I caught some nice crappie Saturday at Rhodes off the dam.

This is absolutely false. The lakes are down because we are in a drought. A lack of rain made all the lakes in Texas go down. There are very few driiling rigs running in the area and surface water is not desirable for fracing anyway.

I was a Windmill today, it is about 8 feet low. Rucker pond only covers an acre at best, as of last week. We need rain desperately. If you want, I have pictures of Windmill and Benbrook that are pathetic and depressing.

Rhodes was way down even when the others were full. Clear Lake at one point was full and Rhodes was way down. There was a rig set up right across the street, where do you think the water in the holding tank came from

Might be back at clear or black creek in the afternoon tomorrow. That's an open invite

Dude, the holding tanks are not for fracing - they are for mud to drill with. You think the Federal Government would sell water to a drilling company. You think the drilling company wants to by water from the Federal Government. You don't know the worst sentence in the world then, which is "Hi, I am from the government, and I want to help."

Most of thiose lakes have been low for over four years. I have noticed this in the last nine years that I have out there fishing.

False, Rhodes was full just a couple years ago. Strange that it started getting real bad once the drilling rig went up. Must be coincidence!

Believe what you want. Drilling in the area dates back to the 1950s. The pump jacks by Clear Lake have been there since the 1980's. I remember them from Quail hunting with my friends in Fort Worth.

I worked the geology in the area for a school project. The Paluxy formation (the red dirt in the area) is porous in some areas.

The drought started a couple of years ago. Unfortunately North Texas has been in a rainfall deficit since 2010. Average is 36" annually. 2010 saw 31" and 2011 was 26".

The drilling / oil companies make a nice target while we drive around in big trucks and SUVs. Go ahead and blame them in your mind, but as a scientist I generally have to look at the facts. The drilling company cause the lake level to drop does not add up to me. So I will believe what I to as well.

Why the water is way down doesn't really matter to me. I just hope they don't go dry, it would be ashame for suck wonderful fisheries to be lost. I love fishing those lakes. I'll be fishing them this week for sure

Agreed 110%. Pray for rain, because I am afraid that is the only solution. I don't see the Dept of Ag, Forestry Service pumping in ground water to refill them. They don't have the money.

I love that country up there. Windmill Lake is the only fly-fish only lake in the state of Texas. That makes it pretty special. I just wish others loved it as much as we do, cause the garbage around all the lakes makes me sick. People who leave garbage for others to pick up are scum in my book.

The only people who believe the oil industry is not causing the Rhodes problem are those whose paychecks come from the drilling either directly or indirectly.

You cannot take millions of gallons from a pond without affecting the lake level, particularly in a time of severe drought such as we are experiencing now.

I'm not in the industry, but from what I know about it, the fracking water is generally brought in on trucks, used, sometimes stored on site in frac ponds and then 20-50% is recovered and treated. It can take anywhere between 2 and 10 Million gallons to frac a well. So one could use an average of 4.5 Million Gallons per well. A 1 Acre Pond, 1 ft deep holds about 3.25 Million Gallons, multiply that by 10 feet and 10 acres and you are talking 325 Million Gallons for a pretty small lake. Just for comparison it takes about 1 Million Gallons to irrigate an acre of crops for a year, a golf course around here will use a million gallons a week and the average US person uses 25K gallons annually.

According to the 2012 Texas water plan:
56% of water in Texas goes to commercial crops
26.9% to cities and public-water systems
9.6% to manufacturing, including refineries
4.1% to power generation
1.8% for livestock
1.6% to mining, which includes oil-and-gas drilling.

Yes, fracking requires a lot of water, but relatively speaking it would be way down on my list of what to target for water conservation. We are most definitely in the grips of the worst drought in 50 years. Lakes across the state are low even those hundreds of miles from any drilling. I don't know for certain, but my money would be the water level on these lakes has little to nothing to do with the drilling and a lot to do with the drought.