Ole timers

Any ole timers here can share stories and wisdom?

From the glory days on the bend, or big Sam, or any blast from the past?

I’ve heard tell of ole timers floating original rapala’s under the willows on texoma back in the day producing big stringers!

Waller should be dropping by soon

I remember reading the rat l trap story on here not too long ago lol

Wake up, get on the water by day break. Catch a bunch of nice bass in about an hour . Get off of the water, head home, shower, get dressed, and head to work. Great way to start a day!



side note: Now that I am retired I can stay on the water as long as I want.

Rat l trap was a knock off! Stolen from the cotton cordel hot spot, but the original was the heddon sonic! Boy we caught bass on them heddon Sonics and torpedo’s

Oh boy.

I use to stay out till late in the summer and be at work by 6

There will never be another lake like Toledo Bend, when it was new in the early 70's.
A flooded forest with boat roads cut through it. Acres of bass schooling on top in the boat roads.
Fork was in that category but for sheer numbers of bass in a day, I never seen anything like Toledo
At the end of the day your top water bait would be destroyed.

rapalas and creme t-rig 6" worms or otasco spinner baits (cuz they worked and were cheap). worked on texoma, arbuckle, eufaula and tenkiller for sure. eufaula and tenkiller you would find a 4-5# smallie every now and then. all that and not even a flasher in the boat,



I can remember the sandbass runs on texoma too, you could wear your arms out with a topwater.

You got that right. My family lived on the Sabine River before the lake was flooded. We knew where a hundred ponds, ditches and creeks were within 50 miles of our farm. When I was in HS fishing Toledo, I didn't know you could have a bad day bass fishing. We had a Bass Cat stick steer that we hit a thousand floating logs and stumps in. That was a tough boat. Snakes falling out of trees into the boat, all kinds of wildlife everywhere trying to find new habitat. good stuff

gruber

I told you I only troll spoons! Great stories! Great memories! Good times!

Toledo Bend sure sold a lot of bass boats with all those school bass. I wonder now where did they all go ? Tiny Torpedo's and Red Fins were my lure of choice back then. Even before TB and Big Sam, I fished Dam B in what we called the Log Jam and top water baits were all we used. I remember fishing a Mann's worm that came with 2 hooks in it and catching fish under the bridge. I started with a 12 foot tin boat that I paddled thru the Jam till one day the wind was so bad I broke the paddle. I bought my first trolling motor after that along with a 5 hp Rude and I was in high cotton.

The NoNo spinner bait. Cream worms 1/4 oz lead weight #4o hook fish all day with 3 worms. Chrome rattle-trap, Tiny torpedo, Wing Den, Little George. Ugly Stick, Go Deeper Crab, Mud Bug, Luckys 13, Wood Vamp. Motor oil twiggy worm. We sure caught a lot of fish with a Humminbird flasher, that's all we had. Sure was Great going over all the Good times we had. I just came back from Viet- nam in 1969 when i first fished Toledo bend. Great memories.

Manns Jelly worm in black grape and scuppernong ---T-rigged with smaller weights . The Cotton Cordell Big -O , and the Hula popper .
I will never forget my first ever top water bite , all I had was the hula popper , 2 to 3 lbers busting off a rocky point like crazy that covered about half the size of a basketball court . It went on for almost an hour . My adrenaline was so jacked up ( I was sixteen years old , 1977 ) , I kept trying to set the hook as soon as they busted my popper . Must have missed about 50 times , I only hooked about 6 or 7 bass but what a vision to see .
I still have that original Hula popper and laugh everytime I see it in my shop .

Hula poppers jitterbugs and bushwackers rib worms mister twister worms Mann’s jelly worms Johnson minnow with and without the wing thing gold Redfin rapala’s

I caught a lot of fish on the old H&H baits and tiny torpedoes. I could not afford the more expensive 2 dollar lures very often. The original Zebco 33s were my reels of choice.

Zebco 33 on Lews speed stick 5’6” the ole pistol grip

I've had a lot of good times on the water, on several lakes. But I would love to have 1 more chance, to experience fishing a lake like Toledo Bend in the 70's, and Sam Rayburn in the mid 90's. I've never been to Fork, but from what I understand, it was great in the late 80' thru the mid 90's.

1970"s GPS Unit

Skeeter hawk in the trees, I think tpw should find the funding to take a bad dead lake like bardwell and drain it replace the timber, brush fill it and stock it make a Great Lake again

You ain’t fishing Bardwell the right way. It is still a very good bass lake. The lake has hundreds of brush piles. But......You’ll need a fancy, new fangled device called “side scan“ to find them. Or a hundred years of counting down grubs till ya lose a hook. Haha.

It's still the one - and in the only color you need.

Still fishing with the Zero Hour Bomb Company Product on a pistol grip.

That’s just an example, I have not fished it for years, Navarro mills then, kill all the trash fish add brush refill and stock, they should be a new refurbished lake opening every five yrs, or just block off a creek arm kill all the fish stock trees and new fish, old lakes suck, and their full of rough trash fish

Devil’s horse great bait especially for dead sticking 1 to 5 minutes but I thought it was a smithwick lure?

4 inch Cotton Cordell Redfin in gold pattern Also

Go during the middle of the week to Fork. Kept a roll of quarters in my truck at all times! Why you ask? So I could call in sick from the pay phone at Lake Fork Marina. We couldnt call in sick until after 6am at my old job!!! LOL

I used to call in with the bubonic plague on fridays am to make 3 day fishin weekends

I would almost never use a sick day for actually being sick.

Fishing fever for sure.

I remember a 14 ft flat bottom aluminum, 9.9 Johnson, paddle, concrete anchor and a window sash weight on a knotted cord for the depth finder. Baits were pretty simple - two or three hook rigged Creme worm with a spinner, Devils Horse, Pico Perch (white with red head), Hula Popper, H&H spinnerbait, trolling Hellbenders and Bombers, Jitterbugs, hair jigs with pork and for schooling fish a topwater bait with a leader on the rear pulling a Goin' Jesse, which was a small shad imitator not many have heard of. In 1962 the World's Fair was held in Seattle and my grandparents brought us all back a couple of the original Rapala 2 1/2 - 3" minnows. They were like magic. So much so that the lips were breaking off from catching so many and my mother would carve a new one out of a plastic pill bottle at night and glue it in with epoxy so we could catch them again the next day.

True Temper glass rod, Zebco 202 and 404 with cheap mono (only mono). It wasn't until '64-65 that we caught on to TX rigging but worms were hard to find so an uncle would buy ice cube sized chunks of plastic in purple, blue and red along with a Creme style mold and have us kids pour for all of us. Probably where some of my sinus issues arise. Fliptail worms and lizards showed up about that time also.

Most of this took place on the Pines in Johnson and Alley creeks. For a 7-8 year old kid it was like heaven.

Sweet memories!

Wow, the memories. Sam Rayburn in the 60s, schools of bass acres in size ravaging shad in the black forest while there were still leaves in the trees. Toledo bend boat roads covered in schooling fish that would maul all the chrome off a Smithwick Carrot top. Lake Guerrero Mx. catching so man y fish on plastics that after a week my ribs would look like I'd gone 10 rounds with Mike Tyson. We'd cut up a foam mattress and tape the foam to the butt of our rods to try and protect out ribs and bellies. Lake El Salto in the glory years, leaving a spot where we were catching 7-8 pounders to go find a "big" fish (caught a 13+ that night) Good times that I fear may never be repeated.

Lots of great stories

Remember in the early 90's going to Ray Roberts with nothing but watermelon flukes. You would hook several that were possible double digits but would be lucky to get one in. It was a slot lake back then and in ways I liked it better than Fork, mainly because it wasn't as crowded.

We fished ray Roberts before it opened, about a third full, bass were small less than 2 pounds on spinnerbaits almost every cast

I remember going to Sam Rayburn when I was just a little guy 1969 or 1970. We would go with my grandfathers. Crappie for days! They didn’t bass fish back then, crappie and cats were their game of choice. It was awesome. The memories of those two men make me smile. I’m still running my grandfather’s old evinrude 25. 1970 and still running strong. I caught my first big bass when I was 5. Pre rigged cream worm, zebco 202 and a old eagle claw rod. I was hooked from that point on! Lol

iv been making Balsa Crankbaits for 40 years they seem to work everywhere!

Good Looking Baits

I remember the Dallas boat show every January at market hall, one year in the early 70 they were pushing an angled bobber that swims up under a dock, saw the slickest outdoor salesman ever one year good ole bill dance, then there was the Sexy black haired lady who ran the Jim Reeves fan club I was about 20 and in love, lol, the bass n gals had a replica of George Perry’s world record! There were even shows and I remember an outdoor outfitters show, outfitters and fish camps from Alaska and Canada wow! Like a kid in a candy shop!

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See can’t load pics on this stupid site others are easy

Fished a club tourney on Lake O the Pines way back in the day.
We had been out a couple of hours when I hit a rock solid stump (Pines is famous for these), and broke my aluminum prop. Back then, only the rich boys had stainless.
We limped back to the marina and I drove into town and bought another prop. At that time, an aluminum prop was about 40 bucks.

Installed it and returned to the lake and the fishing - we were doing pretty good on buzzbaits.
Bang! Hit another stump and broke that one.

Two props in one day.

We finished up with a decent weight that day but I learned one important lesson - stainless props only from then on.