Fishing IN College Station

Howdy,
I was wondering if anyone has tried to fish anywhere within Bryan/ College Station. I've tried lake bryan so anywhere else?

The pond behind the George Bush Library is decent. Just remember to use barbless hooks. I fished there this morning and caught 5 or 6 bass all in the 2-4 lb range. The community ponds like central park and gabbards pond are ok for catfish but poor for bass. Lake Bryan is basically a waste of time. Other than that there is gibbons creek out in Carlos, which is excellent once you figure out how to fish it. Also lake Somerville.

right now there is great bank fishing for white bass on the creeks that run into somerville. there is a thread somerville white bass run in this section go check it out a bunch of great information on that thread.

This is quite interesting to me, because I live about 2 miles from the library. Never notived a pond. Would like to give it a try, but what about the barbless hooks? And if there are rules (like only barbless hooks), it must be ok to fish there, right?

just bend the barbs back on your hooks and you're golden.

Using minnows, shrimp (yes I said shrimp), or stink bait (yes, I meant stink bait) works on bass/bluegill/mudcats when nothing else will...

The fish in that pond will be around the very rim of the pond under the overhang or at the dropoff that's about 10 feet off the bank around the entire pond. Points and bends are particular places to fish the drop off. Topwater chuggers, super shallow cranks, deeper cranks fished CAREFULLY, rat-l-traps, wacky rigged worms, and buzzbaits are lures that I've had particular success with.

You can fish for trout right now in Central Park as well. The College Station Police Station is the best bluegill pond (other than bush library for the sporadic trophy bluegill) in CS.

George Bush is a great pace to fish, I've been fishing there for several years and the bass fishing there is great when they stock it. Largest bass i caught there was at 7-8 lbs. Deep cranks will get caught quite often there since there are quite a few snags in there. My lures of choice are spinners, rebel crank baits or any shallow running crank baits under 2 inches, Soft plastics (all under 6 inches preferred) and poppers in the summer. You can easily catch 10 or more a day

Gabbard Park off of Holleman used to be the best bass fishing place in CS hands down back in the day. You could catch bass at an avg of 3 lbs with artificials and 5 lbs on up with shiners and or 2 inch perch. Oh, and the frog fishin there in the summer is loads of fun. the bass fishing there is mediocre at best now, you'll be lucky to catch a decent bass every so often. Dark colored Soft plasitcs work best and scum frogs in the summer

Central Park, eh, used to be a great bass pond as well, but once they drained the darn thing and removed all the brush, underwater stumps, most of the tree's by the bank and killing all of the older native fish, It's basically a stock pond for mostly small channels and bull heads.

Cy Miller was a great place to fish when they used to stock it with catfish back in the day but as Aggiegolfer said, It's more suited for bluegills now days.

The pond across the street of Cy Miller (by the cemetery), is another great place to fish. It may not look like it, but there are nice bass in that pond, you just gotta know what to use over there.


But by far the best place to Fish around CS is probably Research Park down the road from George Bush Library. Though fishing there is illegal (the police patrol there is ridiculous and once they catch you fishing they kick you out immediately), I fish there regardless when I can get away with it. the bass fishing there is amazing, you can catch over 15 bass in a span of 45 minutes if you're careful. The catfishing there is great and the channel cats are decent size (I mainly sport fish so I throw them and everything else back). there is even carp in those ponds as well. I managed to catch one last year when they were spawning in march and it was easily a solid 20 pounds (they were blowing up all over the banks, it was insane). But just remember that fishing there is illegal, so If you decide to go fishing there, do so at your own risk. I do so cause I simply LOVE to fish and I just don't really care lol, so by all means, don't be like me.

yeah, ultralite, I fish the bush library a lot, and one of my favorite things to do is intentionally bang like a bandit 200 off the dropoff/snag and then stop it and let it rise over it. You get nailed when you stop it a lot.

I definitely wouldn't recommend a novice or someone unfamiliar to the pond do that...

Gabbard is great in the summer if it's totally covered in duckweed...a topwater frog can be dynamite, even all day sometimes. It keeps everyone else off the pond too

Yea that duckweed is great during the summer, I absolutely LOVE how the bass explode on the scum frogs there.

If you want even more action, go after the bull frogs there with weedless topwaters (in fact, using a small plastic worm or tubes work better). It's freakin hilarious watching those frogs stalk your lure then pounce the living daylights out of them. For me, that's hands down the most fun you will have out there. It's great when the bass are inactive.

Never tried barbless hooks. I have a hard enough time catching fish with barbed hooks.

you'd be suprised at how little difference it makes if you keep pressure on the fish...they penetrate much easier than barbed hooks, so you actually gain some advantage in some circumstances.

Lake Bryan is usually good for crappie along the banks for a little while in February and early March... But the rest of the time it's pretty poor fishing IMHO..

Man I may go to George Bush Library... John if you want to go let me know!

Hello fellow CS anglers,

This morning i fished Gabbard park, my 4th time out i think until today i totaled 1 fish, Today i nailed 5 catfish (2 were over 12 inches) and 1 small blue gill. I've fished small jigs, road runners, and plastic worms without much luck but today was using bacon. I havn't tried central park but i will. I don't really know how to bass fish but judging by the size of the pond you will need to have a small worm to get a bass. I will go to academy and buy some frog lures, and try a top water popper to see what i can get. If you just want to feel some fight on your rod then this place wasn't too bad. 4 catfish came very quickly. I did have what i thought was a big fish, since i could see it carrying my line away but i didn't wait long enough and missed setting the hook. Send me a message if some1 wants to join me, or we could take a trip to gibbons

Anyone know how deep Gabbard is? I casted around once and thought it was really really shallow.

Hit up gabbard park tonight. Caught 10 channels between 10-12 inches in less than an hour. Using a slip float rig works great with catfish charlie right off the bank.

@314159265358, Thanks for the tip on Gabbard. Went with a guide this weekend to Fayette and caught 33 nice cats (2-7 lbs). But now I'm back home and back to reality with no boat.

Recently, I have been fishing at Gabbard park. Some say its bad for bass, but recently ive been catching some good ones there.

Fished the technology park ponds while waiting on my son to clear out of the dorms.

Caught 3 nice sized smallmouth and 1 cat on hooks with nightcrawlers in around 10 minutes.

Lots of fun and a great way to kill time.

Smallmouth? Really? I'm about to move to College Station... That would be awesome if there really is a smallmouth pond!

Yep...there are a series of small interconnected ponds. Great way to kill time. As the guys say you have to go barbless.

Ponds are small but active

Anybody fish the pond in Bryan, between College and Finfeather?

The golf course pond? Or pond near Bombers field?

The one just north of Bombers Field

Yeah we used to yak it during summer months. Nothing big. 12-14” fish. A lot of fun

Cool deal. I'll have to check it out.

Thanks!

smallmouth bass?

I was thinking the same thing. Maybe he is referring to sunfish? I might go check out the ponds later today. Will post if I catch anything

Maybe a kinda hijack of the thread but we started dragboat racing on Lake Bryan back in 2000. I was on the setup crew that came in early and surveyed and setup the course. As we did we had to walk a lot of the bank to get our buoys and timing equipment in the right places. I noticed for several years that there were beds being created in the shallows and asked a TPWD warden about it. He told me they most likely were Tilapia. Never got a chance to try to fish for them but I’ve eaten quite a few from Fiesta or Kroger and they were pretty good. Just thinking there might be a fishery that is overlooked there. Or not?

The tilapia died back significantly at Lake Bryan a few years back due to several issues and I don't know if they recovered or not. The power plant was down during the winter doing repairs and the water temperature dropped to much for the tilapia to tolerate. But TPWD did stock 70K redfish a couple of years back. I haven't fished that lake recently so I'm not up on current events..

Just saw these posts. Technology park ponds? Does he mean research park? Because if so I thought those weren’t allowed to be fished?

Most all the coves in Lake Somerville are gonna be filled with bass real shallow now til the spawn. Whether you are in a boat or bank there is a lot of access and me and some buddies have had a lot of luck there. Another thought would be to network a little bit and find some older people who may let you fish their ranch or private pond in exchange for a little work or something. Either way, worst they can do is say no!

The old Bryan golf course pond off Villa Maria has some decent fishing.

This is a fact. We used to catch big bass there in the late 80s/early 90s.

Plastic worms, top waters and spinnerbaits all worked well.