I had 4 half days with Rhandy and 3 and a half days scheduled with Dale this week and I feared the weather would cause us to miss half of that. It worked out better than I could have hoped. We only missed one half day due to weather, despite forecasts of 75% plus for rain and thunderstorms every single day.
Lake Fork is now full pool and even a bit over. The drought has officially ended in east Texas and now the flooding begins. Compare these two pictures from January 2015 and taken this week.
I started off Sunday with Rhandy. We got in a little over 3 hours before threats of storms sent us in a bit early. I think we had 6 fish with the biggest being around 6 pounds. Later that night there was a hell of a storm and a tornado hit nearby Van. It caused over $40mm in damages.
I started out the next morning at 6:30 am with Dale. We began on a main lake point with Carolina rigs and I managed to catch a 7-3 and a 7-5 in about an hour and a half. Both nice fish and the first one fought very hard. That was fun. We had a tougher time the rest of the morning and ended up with 7 fish for the day.
After 8 hours with Dale I stepped onto Rhandy's boat for the afternoon. Rhandy found a couple of good stops and we ended up with 13 fish for the afternoon. I think the biggest went about 5 pounds. I spent over 13 hours on the water and would repeat that on Tuesday.
The weather this whole trip was pretty squirrely. It felt more like early March than May. Temperatures were in the upper 50's to low 70s and cloud cover and a stiff breeze kept it chilly. More than once I wished I had brought my big coat.
Tuesday morning started out with more cloud cover and again we caught most of our fish in the morning. At one point we went down a good bank in about 6 feet of water throwing in and out with Carolina rigs. We had 5 bites in less than 6 feet, 5 bites deeper than 6 feet. I caught 1 and jumped off two while Dale caught 2. At 3 pm I stepped off Dale's boat and onto Rhandy's and we hunted up another 7 fish. My biggest of the day was with Rhandy and went about 4 pounds.
Wednesday morning I was surprised to find both Rhandy and Dale at the Minnow Bucket ramp. Dale went to pick up his boat and found it had a flat. Rather than having me wait on the bank a couple of hours, he waked up Rhandy so I wouldn't miss any fishing. I appreciate both of them being so flexible and allowing me to make the most of my trip. I asked Dale if he wanted to take the afternoon slot but he said there was a forecast of heavy storms and we would probably be in early anyway. The forecast proved correct.
Rhandy had a tough day and we only managed to boat 7 fish in 8 and a half hours. He caught a 7 pounder but my biggest was under 5. We had to run in once due to heavy rain and I even caught one bass right next to his dock. We had the rain gear on and off all day. We came in about 3 pm with strong showers approaching on the radar. They hit about 4:30 pm and it rained hard and heavy for about an hour and a half. That was the only half day I missed this trip.
Thursday dawned foggy with a heavy mist. Dale headed us out north and we found a few along the bank with Carolina rigs. Then he saw a few chasing shad and we headed out to a nearby hump to chunk Yellow Magics. We had a couple of pretty good downpours of rain but I still managed to hook 2 decent fish on topwater. One went about 5 and a half. We rolled in about 10:30 with another 7 fish to the total.
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