Austin area bass around Thanksgiving time?

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Luckee
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Austin area bass around Thanksgiving time?

Post by Luckee »

Looks like I'm going to be in Austin for Thanksgiving, and with all the good bass fishing I've had in Texas in springtime, I instantly think of bringing my foldable kayak and taking a paddle at Bastrop and anywhere else I can reach.

Are bass still likely to come up for topwater at that time of year? Or does the cooling of the water turn the bass off?
Throwing topwater flies is my main method, so if it doesn't work I might be looking at some skunks :)

Thanks!! :)
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Cuervo Jones
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Re: Austin area bass around Thanksgiving time?

Post by Cuervo Jones »

Bastrop and Fayette will both cough up topwater bass right through winter. Shad and frog patterns should do the trick.


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Ron Mc
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Re: Austin area bass around Thanksgiving time?

Post by Ron Mc »

If you're on the other end of town Lake Georgetown is a good choice. especially the top end from Tejas Camp - mostly spotted bass.
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Luckee
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Re: Austin area bass around Thanksgiving time?

Post by Luckee »

Sounds great to me gentlemen, thanks for the replies! :)
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Luckee
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Re: Austin area bass around Thanksgiving time?

Post by Luckee »

True story, I launched around dawn on Bastrop and, casting a little frog-like popper, hooked up on cast #1 :)

It was considerably more work getting the next handful though. So many coots around! Do you think they spook the bass with all their flapping about?

My biggest fish, which was a respectable 4-5 pounder, was a total freebie: while working a wormish-looking bunny strip fly back to the yak, I put down the rod for a second, and suddenly the line started moving fast! Hookup! :) And a reminder to work that kind of fly really slow, letting it drop.

However, both Somerville and Fayette skunked me! Dang, on past experience I would have thought these Texas bass lakes were inexhaustible and idiot-proof. Somerville was cold and murky (turnover?), without a weed in sight. How do you fish it?? I worked timber at the fringes and cast along Nails Creek borders. With more time and energy, I would have checked out Yegua Creek, but with signs so discouraging, I went hiking instead.

Not hooking up at Fayette on a calm, warm Sunday evening was a shocker for me, as my last trip there in April went over two dozen strikes. What gives? But of course conditions change. "Thees ees fishing, not mathematics," as an Argentine pal once told me. What a bummer when the sum total is zero though!
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Cuervo Jones
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Re: Austin area bass around Thanksgiving time?

Post by Cuervo Jones »

The bass in Fayette are hiding out in the channels between 16 and 20’ chomping on shad and crawdads. Not much going on shallow as far as I can tell.


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Luckee
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Re: Austin area bass around Thanksgiving time?

Post by Luckee »

Yup that makes sense. I had a spinning rig and some diving crawdad plugs that might have worked -- back in the parked car :)

BTW Cuervo, I liked your post about being crowded by a bass boat, over on the duck hunting thread. Had a similar experience fishing the delta here, where two boats rolled right up on a prime spot I was fishing and proceeded to putt-putt all over the catching zone. I heard one of the guys muttering, "he don't want to talk to us, he's a damn snob."

Snob? No guys, just don't like you crowding me like that when you've got 1000 square miles of water, and plenty of horsepower to find somewhere else to fish!!

And what serious fisher would? My conclusion is that a lot of these folks aren't really all that keen on fishing or hunting; what they really like is going around fast on a boat that goes "vroom vroom," or making a big noise with a shotgun vaguely pointed at birds vastly out of range. My dream is that VR video games will get loud and fun enough that they'll just stay off the water over time.
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