December Trip to Lake Amistad, Tx

[John Pensyl]

      Been crazy busy but i wanted to share the cool fish we got into while I was down in tx in December.  I went down when our season closed and stayed for a week before Christmas.  The goal was to try and find a few big Large mouths, hopefully catch the stripers during a bait blitz or two when they had the shad pinned to the surface and also try to troll up a few big stripers using a few musky baits I brought down. 

     The fishing was tough for the most part, cold fronts had completely shut down the bass bite and we never did witness a single feeding frenzy the entire week I was there.  We spent a lot of time trying to find fish and nickel and dimed small bass and managed to crank up a few stripers throughout the week but nothing over 10 lbs. 

Finally I convinced my buddy Geoff to let me set up a simple trolling program with the baits I brought down, a bagleys db-08, a db-06 and a shad colored 5 inch tuff shad.  We covered a ton of water on the main lake, in river channels, the lake is absolutely huge and for well over an hour I never marked a single fish.  Finally when coming up out of a deep river channel from 120 fow in to about 20 fow the screen lit up with suspended fish, BIG fish.  I thought for sure we found the striped bass wintering grounds or something, the screen was full of big hooks and almost immediately rods started to take hits.  Only problem was nothing was sticking, rods would bend, a little drag might pull and off they'd come.  The rod with the db-06 on it was getting absolutely molested.  It took 7 or 8 hits in about a half hour of doing circles and both of us were confused out of our minds with what was going on.  Finally something stuck and when it did it absolutely screamed drag like a king.  We thought for sure it was a big striper and when we got it boat side everything made sense.  They were long nose gar, big ones, and they were everywhere.  They were plenty willing to bite but getting them to stick was near impossible and they were way too deep to effectively use rope flies like we do back here.  (Although the next day I tried.  Tried hard too, trolled rope flies, drop shotted rope fllies, replaced trebles on crank baits with rope, didn't work.)  So we stuck with it for a couple hours and out of probably 30-35 we got to bite we got 4 to stick.  Figures I'd go to tx for bass and find big toothies.  Here's a few pics, just figured you guys would get a kick out of it.

 

[John Jarosz]

JP..that's one he77 of a drop-off you're showing on the graph.  And are you sure you're not man-handling a San Angelo bar instead of a gar?  It sure looks like one.

Oh, I almost forgot...a beauty of a striper.  what was the temp?  you look like you're dressed warm, but whatever it is, it's gotta be warmer than here.

Thanks for the report & good luck some more.

[John Pensyl]

It was cold in am each day, high 20's-low 30's. Most days topped out in the 60s, finally saw 70s towards the end of the week. Half the lake is in Mexico but the cold fronts down there have been relentless this winter.

[Stephen Glassic]

John, Did you see heavily fortified patrol boats?

[John Pensyl]

They have the same boarder patrol boats we have. BP does have a pretty significant presence just about everywhere u go down there. That's actually what Geoff does, he's a bp agent. On the lake marker buoys mark the US/Mexico boarder.

[Scott McKee]

When you beached to let the dog do his business, did you see any mice in sombreros?  Maybe a really, really fast little fella?

[3r18sb1ehgc6k]

Those Gar are awesome, and a nice lookin lab youve got there too!

[John Pensyl]

Didn't see speedy at the lake but he may have made me a burrito at a stand in del Rio. Guessing its the only work he could find now that cartoons have to be politically correct.

[Scott McKee]

I'm glad he's working.  He's friends with my sister, but then again Speedy Gonzalez is friends with everybody's sister.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AU7VxAi_gk