Hey y'all,

 

Central Texas in very early March, what stage are the bass in in terms of the spawn? 

 

And has anyone on here fished Tradinghouse Creek Reservoir? 

Pre-spawn/spawn & no

I’ll ask my brother-in-law pretty sure he makes a trip there every now and then. 

Should be pre-spawn. It can be a little temp dependent as we sometimes get late feb ice storms. For me pre-spawn is on the table starting mid-feb, although that is usually a tad early.

 

FYI https://tpwd.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=fd103605049c44a8b81be6f9da6f4956 has some cover installed by the state marked on it. 

On 1/17/2023 at 11:21 AM, LrgmouthShad said:

Central Texas in very early March, what stage are the bass in in terms of the spawn? 

 

And has anyone on here fished Tradinghouse Creek Reservoir? 

 

I have gone to visit a buddy (RIP Luke, I sure miss my friend) that lived in Waco in early March a couple of times many years ago. I have fished Tradinghouse at that time of year. One thing about Texas in the shoulder seasons is that the weather is ALWAYS a wild card. 

 

The power plant is torn down now, but from my recollection, it wasn't a lake that was warmed from the power plant. I could be wrong about that. I remember it being cold and rainy, but we still caught bass up shallow in the reeds. Weather was so bad that there was only one other boat on the water with us. I didn't care. I came to fish. I think they had redfish in Tradinghouse too IIRC. The bass weren't too deep in Lake Waco either.

 

This year, you have a full moon on 3/7/23, so I would wager that there would be some nice bass shallow at that time.

 

With all of that said, if I was anywhere in the central Texas area in early March (and around the time of the full moon), I would be crawling over broken glass to get my donkey over to Lake OH Ivie (a 17 pounder was caught there today).

Never fished tradinghouse, hear good things though.

we will likely have one more cold snap, 50/50 but the planet is primed for a polar sudden stratospheric warming event that typically destabilizes the polar air parcels and sends them diving south. I'm no expert but I expect one last cold snap a few days on either side of march 1. Once nighttime temps are consistently warming it's probably mid pre-spawn. I think the last few days of nice weather may have been enough to signal the beginning of spring for the bass...I started seeing the bigger spiders on the rocks again and that's usually a sign of sorts at ray bob

OH Ivie has the allure of massive fish, I think there's likely a state record in there at current moment. It's just so dang crowded. Just one ramp there handles over 100 boats on a typical weekday. You may come home with pics of the fish of a lifetime, but you're more likely to leave with an average experience at best. I haven't gone out of my way to try and fish there; I would only really do that if I was going with some of the more prominent guides (but probably not the guy we all know of). Landing a teener at a public reservoir is a lifetime goal of mine and I honestly believe I will have better luck with that somewhere other than Ivie.