thediscochef

I caught a tree branch that turned out to be a 7lb bass

I grew a lot as a fisher in 22. Started using more lures successfully, caught 10 over 5lbs including a PB 1lb over last year's. Had long periods of skunk which is helping me right now. It's not my fault lol

Sounds good. Yeah that may be a tough find guide-wise but I may be around if you want a short tour of the bank LOL Boca 31 is my favorite latin fusion type place, they don't make a bad meal. They set the bar high for the entire area. They have additional locations that may be closer to you, but I believe Denton is the O.G. and they tend to have the most unique specials. If you go, you like spice, and there's specials on the board...order them and ask questions later. I also like the guava cream cheese empanadas for dessert. DiAbruzzo italian market is good, they do good in-house pasta and sandwiches. There's a good Salvadorian place in town too, Holy Pupusas. Komodo Loco is also solid, asian fusion type stuff. There's more but those are the generally unanimously approved restaurants in my circles. If you need a good spot for beverages, Paschall's is the can't miss spot.

Lewisville is a good bass lake, a little more consistent day-to-day than ray roberts and probably has more short-notice guide options. There have been double digits out of it in the last calendar year. My fishing buddy does better at LL than he does with me at Ray bob. That said, RR is a much prettier and clearer lake. I live the same distance to both lakes and I pretty much never go to Lewisville. While RR is finicky, it can be the best lake in DFW when it's on. Right now the lake is not fishing with any consistency which is making bites tough. The guy who does the TPWD reports for roberts is primarily focused on sand bass in his business but has been on that lake since it opened. Same with Reelin' RR. I personally fish with Dannie Golden, he guided the dude who caught the lake record in 2016 and has some good spots. Got me a PB like three weeks ago. He is more black bass focused for sure and if you're gonna catch fish you have probably the best shot with him IMO all of that said, there's really not a wrong place to fish in DFW, except Lake Grapevine and Lake Worth. If you can't get on at RR, consider Tawakoni if you can make it that far. Joe Pool, Ray Hubbard, and Eagle Mountain are some other close options that may have short notice guides but all of those are lesser fisheries than RR, Tawakoni, and LL in most local opinions. If you can drive a couple hours your options improve tremendously (Possum Kingdom, Texoma, Whitney, ...Fork). Southerly lakes will probably have a faster bite. Things have been real slow all around, we're stuck in the 50ish water temp that has em slow before they get fast again when it gets into the mid 40s. correct lol

Good to know...I went to Eisenhower a few months ago and didn't do any good but it was HOT still. I'd looked at the maps and figured that corner of the lake would be good bass territory but I was working and my time was limited. Need to get up there with an exploring buddy. I know there's monsters all up and down that side of the lake over by Buck creek. Lake record came not far from there. Isle is usually a wind-in-your-face sort of place...with any north or west wind it's a thing. Main reason I got a DC reel. All of the parks on RR are a challenge with a north or west wind, but Jordan and Isle are easily the roughest in those situations. They finally stopped trying to maintain the breakwall at Isle because it was getting roughed up so hard. I've seen two foot swell on the isle ramp which is impressive IMO for a lake that size.

this right here is pretty uncool it's one thing to blast your music while your engine is making many RPMs. it's another thing to subject innocent bystanders to the vocal crimes of david lee roth while we're all just trying to get somewhere. there's this one guy at ray roberts, wake boater. See him a lot in the summer. has a knack for not turning his stereo down until it's his turn at the ramp. so he's just parked in the no-wake zone giving everyone a free concert of the worst garbage you ever heard. i would love to have a knack for stealthily demagnetizing speakers that belong to people like that...

I always pictured it as a donut shape. like an apple fritter.

what the others have said is good. smaller diameter on a 2500 and down is good. I max out around 10# siege mono on my 2500s and it does ok. the braid does better though, and you can use a heavier leader if you're gonna be casting into hazards or hooking into non-bass/heavy fish. the floating of the braid and the change in line diameter closer to the lure does affect the lure action, sometimes positively sometimes negatively. in this case it may slow your fall rate ever so slightly which is usually OK.

ooo pretty ? there's also a couple of great sports radio stations around here I like that save their episodes to a streaming service so I can listen without commercials. radio commercials are the #1 cause of me turning off the radio. I don't like it when I can't hear snakes rustling behind me so if I do earbuds its just one earbud. But I do like listening to good driving music when I'm coming across the dam, can't say I feel different while running the lake.

my driving music varies a lot but lately my trips to the lake have involved a lot of van halen, journey, and boston

Three actions fluorocarbon hates - cutting, bending, twisting - all present in the uni-uni knot. For fluorocarbon leaders the single-bend/Alberto style knots are the way to go 100%. Just need to be neat about them and make sure you cinch everything down with gloves on...they will absolutely unravel if you leave them too loose. I also like variants that do something with the tag end of the braid...tends to help avoid unraveling too. I went way too far down this rabbit hole last year and now I just use 12# mono on everything, while being constantly mocked by the murder of crows shaped like Roland Martin that follows me around from my house to the lake. He keeps saying weird things about "sink-os" and "owes arks". Ive aged 20 years in six months and I can't find any of my scissors

I hate wake boats too, but a bass boat on a run is loud and makes wake one way or the other. Music down while trolling, blasting while running. I don't really see the problem with that. Especially if it's not the trash sounds I usually hear from the wake boats lol

I haven't had a hit on Ray Bob since 12/29, been out every day trying to figure out when there's some activity going. The only active fish I've been able to find on the reservoir since the new year have been at Isle du Bois around 7PM on a full moon night. And they didn't want anything I was throwing. I tried probably 10 different lures. Until we get colder and they can start gorging on dying threadfins or we warm back up into the 60s...I expect these conditions to continue. I haven't tried the smaller bodies...probably should. It's just not fishing real well. None of the guides I know are doing much better than OK right now. That Buck Creek bridge you were at is a good spot, especially in the fall/late summer but kind of a pain in the butt to get to unless you walk on the train tracks. I've never done very well over there except with spotted bass. gets real muddy after rains. When this lake is on it's among the best in DFW if not the best, but it's off...OFF! like bug spray right now. Worst it's been from the shore since I started fishing it in 2021. Texoma is for sure a better bet...I would fish there more but I live south of RR and I don't know the first thing about shore fishing Texoma lol

aw heck yeah I love zombieposting, this Thread is Risen ?? I don't have a boat, but if I did you're darn right I'd be absolutely blasting Van Halen as I'm doing 60 across the lake. I'm honestly shocked there aren't more radios in bass boats.

same as it ever was. catch more and bigger fish of all kinds and in all places. same as it ever was. same as it ever was. same as it ever was.

I love my rogues, they are absolutely a different animal from the modern 110 styles. The pro rogue suspending moves so well side to side, a near 180 degree dart is so easy to attain. They are lighter than other similarly sized lures like 110s and they are an adjustment on a baitcaster. If I'm taking a rod out specifically for them it's a 7'6" shimano clarus spinning mhf with braid to leader. The floating braid helps limit the diving just a tiny bit.

I would describe my vision without glasses with words we don't say here. First prescription at 16, was OK until 18, then four changes in two years. Been pretty stable since, only one change. 31 now and I navigate by colors and blobs without my glasses. Oh also I have a pretty solid astigmatism so at night everything is Extra Shiny™

I've found it to be only marginally predictable. We've been through some wild swings here in the last year and little of it made any conventional sense. Warming water seemed to be good to a point but I really noticed the changes in activity level in 5-10 degree segments. The cooling this year was also very fast and they absolutely hate it. I also absolutely hate it lol

If you never catch a fish, can you really call it fishing? By my definition, it eventually becomes casting. Which is what I've been doing since 12/29. Been out casting every day since then, not a thing. Using this dead air space to tune my jerkbaits and suspending lipless cranks. Have a boat scheduled for late February; I expect to continue casting until then. Just the way it goes sometimes. It's not my fault as an angler that the fish are currently in a place I just can't get to.

Patterns are for sewing

Happy new year to me

2022 had some main bait themes for me - jerkbait, red eye shad, ned/wacky rig, swimbait. Some of them repeating and overlapping (red eye shad). By the numbers, the red eye shad flat out caught big fish for me this year. 9 fish between 5 and 6 lbs. multiple 5-13s. It's still catching fish. The big ones just arent near. Jerkbait kept me alive in cold weather and gave me a PB a couple weeks ago (7-10). I continue to work on that skill. ned rig kept me alive with dinks in the summer when nothing else was going. gave me my first 20 fish day but also nothing over like 8" except the biggest bass i've seen in the cabela's pond lol (3.5). Wacky rig did some good work when the killer heat of the summer was over. swimbaits killed it for stripers at whitney dam all summer at sunrise and throughout the day. chatterbaits started the year and are still an ole reliable. biggest fish this year on that was 4.0.

I'm happy where i'm at i just want a boat lol

the guy I fish on Ray Roberts with knows JJ a little bit. While it is expensive to fish with him, he knows how do to what he's doing better than just about anyone, and he's a nice enough guy. The price thing is just a filter though I understand why some would be upset with that. If I were among the best in the world at something, I would charge appropriately for my time and I think he does that. Personally I think anyone who really wants to see what ivie can do would get to know that hydrological system really well, and wait for a flood. When the pool rises significantly at ivie it tends to crank out records the following winter. this is what you're paying for, not the fish. give fish a man, a day eat. teach a fish the man, future. or whatever

I find the key with these is your drag setting. I've bent out a bunch of stock megabass hooks when I first bought them but I figure they wouldn't sell a $25 lure with bendy hooks if there wasn't a method to it. There's a lot of great information on that in this forum. I had to lighten up my drag and line and everything got easier except retrieving snags. Line affects more than just lure action. I caught a 7-10 on stock megabass hooks, one was slightly bent from unhooking but I only had two points in her and I was pulling her along just fine. I use the rod to pin and fight the fish with these jerkbaits, like I do with a ned or something. it will rip drag but it's supposed to. 12# siege does great with the action of the bait and is more than enough to pin and fight. I also replace the line tie with a dark colored duo lock snap but I do that on all hard baits. I will also say that what works well for the O.G. 110-style jerkbait (ito vision 110) does wonders with the others, they're all trying to get similar motions.