Granbury fishing

Just purchased a home on Lake Granbury and getting back into fishing after a 20 year break ( fly fished instead). We went out for my first time this morning at sunrise to catch anything that would bite. About 3/4 of the way down the lake towards the dam, we started to fish the shallows and had shad jumping in all directions around us. Made a few casts and caught 7 fish, 6 of them largemouth and one a nice white bass. Was really surprised they intermingled like that. Mostly Rat L Traps and top water spooks. At 10am, it just shut down. Had a great time. Also, was able to break in my new boat, a Ranger 212LS Reata. Have wanted to own a Ranger since I was 10. Pretty happy with the day...

to the TFF. Glad your back from the Dark Side. Ha.. Glad you guys had a good morning. Thanks for sharing.

Hey, my father still has a house down there. If the bass aren't biting you can throw a doughball out on a hook and jerk catfish and carp in about hand over fist. 10 lbs of carp fight real good when you've no bass around.

Tons of shad in Granbury and like you said the fish run together. On a recent morning outing I'm throwing a yellow magic and caught black, white and striped bass in the same area. My go to plastic on Granbury is watermelon red zoom speed worm. Good luck out there

Thanks for the advice. Appreciate anything right now as I'm on a very steep learning curve. Big time changes over the last 15-20 years, especially electronics. We were down by the power plant and they just started popping the surface all around us.

Went out to granbury about a month ago. Didn't Catch anything of size but we caught probably 10-15 largemouth fishing boat docks (standing docks, not floating) and fishing steep rocky drop offs. Caught them on docks with a Texas rigged zoom z-craw with a 3/8 oz tungsten or caught them on the drop offs with finesse jigs. Hope this can help.... Granbury is a tough lake in the middle of summer especially because I don't enjoy fishing deep.

Probably small fish because of the golden algae bloom that occurred a few years ago took out most of the larger fish

Plenty of large fish to be had, just have to want to fish for them. Bank beating won't get it done. Look in 10- 15ft or so. That's not to say you can't pull some decent ones shallow, but your odds and number of fish caught will greatly increase if you do so.

Beating the banks will only get you tired , use your electronics.

Plenty of big fish in the lake...whether it's Large mouth, Striper, or Sandies. Deep bite is pretty good right now, you're likely to catch some of each kind on the same spot.

You guys are talking about fishing deep. This is my first summer with my own boat and summertime fishing has kicked my butt, probably because I am clueless on fishing in deeper (> 10') water. Any pointers or concepts you can share?

My first summer with my own boat as well. So far what I have learned is that if lit can find a long tapering point that extends a good way into the lake I start there. On my home lake If i position my boat in 18-22' of water and cast a Carolina rig on top of the point I can pull a few decent fish off of the edges of the point. Use a heavier weight (3/4-1oz) and about a 3' leader. Baby brush hogs in the color you are Most confident in. I must say, if you really wanna get good at fishing deep you MUST devote time to it. More often than not if I don't get a bite I head shallow and flip, which hurts in the long run

Deep on Granbury for me this year (12ft-28ft). Creek channel edges(steep sides), channel bends, points with structure, flats that drop into creek channel, and bluff wall banks. It will take time for the most part to find the sweet spot in these areas, but when you do they can be worth it. For me, C-rig, football jig, spoons, big cranks, and drop shot have worked. Let us know how it goes.

I'm planning on getting a guide sometime and find out some of their tricks/tips

Some tips on fishing deep. I'm assuming you have a finder. Fire it up. Pull up your lake chart and pick an area you feel like fishing. Look in that area for some deeper structure like a point, hump, ledge or creek channel. Set a waypoint on the structure and go there, then idle over your waypoint looking at your graph.

Once you see something similar to this your in business.


That image is what fish suspended over a hump look like on the graph. Tie on a jig or worm and go nuts. Work drops and ledges from the bottom up, points from the top down, and humps from whichever way you like. Good luck, hope this helps!

Thanks for the help. I'm guessing this is for stripers being almost 50 ft down? I fish for "fish". Will catch anything that is fun. Heck, we chummed with corn and caught a bunch of small catfish using ultra light tackle last weekend. Hooked a large carp until it broke off which was fun. I've seen picks of the large stripers and I'd eventually like to hook into those. They seem the most elusive to me. I can catch some bass pretty much anywhere. Usually not big ones but numbers of the 1-2 lb size. Haven't tried for crappie yet. White bass, when I find them, is like anybody else- simple to catch on anything. Now, back to the stripers. I see huge ones being caught by the pics people post but I've never caught one. Biggest I've ever boated was around 3-4 lbs. that's where I'd like to concentrate when I retire and start concentrating on fishing.

Sorry, noticed I put this in the bass fishing section. I'll repost a similar thread in a more generic section later. Thanks again all of you for your input. It's been a long time with lots of changes in the past 20 years. I'm just glad my rattle traps are still working!

That wasn't meant to be species specific. I just used that image to convey the concept of looking for fish on structure on a graph. Ignore the specifics and focus on the concept. If it's striper your looking for, they are pelagic (open water) fish and don't really hold too much on structure. They will school up and roam water looking for food. Schooling striper are pretty easy to pick out on a graph, you just have to find them first. Most of that food congregates on or near structure, so some of the same concepts apply. Find the food, and the fish will be near by.

Well, we spent the whole holiday weekend at the lake. I'm very impressed with the amount of fish this lake holds. It'll take me years to learn all its secrets but with three of us fishing for 2-3 days, I bet we caught 80-100 fish, mostly largemouths, stripers, whites and hybrids. Nothing larger than 2.5lbs but still fun nonetheless. We'd start before sunrise and we're finished by 10 when all the jet skis and ski boats came out and shut it down. Really enjoyed this since I haven't fished warm water species in 15 or so years.

Catching any smallmouth? Just curious, I caught the lake record smallmouth during a tournament there many years ago, held it for a couple years before getting beat by a guy drowning minnows

Not a one. We caught whites, hybrids, stripers, largemouth and spotted bass, carp, channel cats, crappie and bluegill. We saw some huge gar too and one of them hit our bait but luckily came off before we brought it up to the boat. I think it would be worth cutting the line before hoisting one of those into a boat. Nothing huge except a 15 lb carp and 5 lb channel cat on a 5 wt flyrod swinging a salmon egg pattern. (My son can't quite give up the fly fishing!) A huge bluegill which hit a shad rattletrap. Amazed at the whites and striper, though. They were gorging themselves. They'd hit our rattle traps and as we brought them in, they'd be throwing up a mouth full of shad. Guess they're preparing for winter. All over the surface were dead shad that had been mangled in the melee. One day, we hit schooling largemouths that were in the same area of the whites and stripers the day before. Acted just like the whites and hybrids with the shad. We landed about 10-15 before they slowed down.

We’re still into the fish. Crazy how this lake is producing. Maybe it’s because I’m a newcomer and really beating the water down. We’re catching probably 50% largemouths and 50% stripers. Our group’s best is a 26” striper and mine is a 24” one. Now, we’re going to try and see how the crappie are biting.

Went out today. Definitely slowed down a bunch. Caught six largemouth. All under two pounds and all on squarebill shad colored crankbaits. My son caught a 10.2lb striper that was huge but really short for some reason. He was easily able to put his whole fist in its mouth but it just seemed shorter than the long torpedoes we’ve been catching. It was a big chunk fish. Bite was definitely different too. Every fish just felt like hitting the bottom but kept tugging until they were closer to the boat, then, they would start fighting. Even the striper felt like a dink for the first 30 seconds. Just different than the SLAM the largemouths usually do.

We went out today and really fought for any bites. We had a bunch of white bass come up around us on the surface and they kept us busy but no largemouths. Then, I remembered somebody’s post on Bridgeport about finding them on the shore with deep water nearby. We tried to duplicate that. Used shad colored square bills and really laid into them. I mean, the nose of the boat in 7 foot and the transom in 60. We caught quite a few and then it just stopped again.

Ok. Got a question not necessarily for Granbury so here goes. We’d go out and catch 20-30fish a day in the late summer through September. As the temps dropped, it’s getting tougher to bass, then it completely stops. We’ve done nothing as far as changing lures, techniques or geography. Just plain old stops! It’s happened three times now. We fine the pattern, catch a few and then, nothing. This is over the course of 3-4 hrs during middle of the day, water temp around 62. Thanks for your advice