Лейк-Тревис – отчеты о рыбалке

July is that time of the year in Central Texas where the water temperature on Lake Travis reaches 80 degrees and usually stays there until September. The post-spawn schooling activity tends to concentrate in a few areas of the lake as the bass push deeper in a migration towards cooler water. For the past week, I’ve been lucky enough to find a few of these concentrations of suspended bass with the help of my electronics like the Garmin Livescope, and I’ve put my clients on some nice largemouth bass “keepers”. Deep water marinas on the main lake are the first places I look when trying to find the deep water suspended bass. I’ve covered about 25 miles of Lake Travis on multiple trips the past week, and the bass are all suspended about 30 feet deep over 60 to 100 feet of water on a few of the key main lake marinas. Depending on the time of day, the schools of bass can surface every few minutes to feed, or only once every 20 minutes. The key to catching is to get the bait down to the schools between the feeding frenzies or entice them to the surface. My top two “go-to” baits that are easy for some of my more novice clients are the weighted fluke and a topwater spook. Cast the bait out where the school appears on the Garmin Livescope and work it back to the boat! I usually let the fluke sink for about 15 seconds before ripping it back to the boat. With the spook, I make pretty aggressive jerks to create some serious commotion on the surface. I believe this really gets the attention of the bass when they are down 30 feet or more. Lake Travis is a super clear lake and these bass can see the surface from 60 feet deep! When the lake boat traffic makes it tough to fish the main lake marinas, it’s time to move to some easier fishing areas. Using a drop shot or ned rig behind the marinas consistently produces good numbers. On an evening trip this past Friday the weekend boat traffic was in full swing. It was impossible to fish any of the schooling areas on the deep-water main lake marinas. We spent most of the trip fishing two productive marinas that were 20 to 30 feet deep on the shallow side and protected from all the wake of the weekend boaters. The first marina produced multiple keepers and about twice as many shorter bass. We ended the trip behind one of the largest marinas on the lake and found one pocket that held a few more keepers. These fish were feeding on the crawfish that are native to most Central Texas lakes. Craws and worms seem to work the best when targeting these bass. There are many factors that can make fishing during the dog days of summer a success. Knowledge of fishing patterns, as well as what’s under the water, are key to catching bass when the water temp is near the mid-80s. Let Captain Randal with Central Texas Fishing Guide help guide you to success in fishing! Tight Lines.

I have been so busy its not even funny! But I wanted to take a sec to at least throw one new Travis report up for yall. I fished Travis Saturday PM, Sunday AM, and Sunday PM with different half day trips. While skill level of the anglers fishing with me does make a big difference, the PM evening trips are by far the best bite lately. Saturday's trip was fantastic, we probably had 20 fish with one around 5.5 lbs. Seemed like everything we were catching were chunks! I bet our best 5 would have gone 15 LBS. Right now you can get on some schooling fish, but there is definitely a little luck involved. We happened upon a school of bass busting shad off a windy point that was SUPER busy... like boat wakes from all directions. If you know where to look you can find some schoolers, but again its not a consistent game plan. On the other hand, throwing drop shots and wacky rigs along wind blown bluff walls has been money. Those walls that get pounded by the wind and boat wakes are prime right now. With that said, all bluff walls on Travis are not created alike. Knowing what the bottom is like beneath the waterline is very helpful in finding the ones holding fish. If you would like to learn a little more about what I look for and how I fish them give me a shout. Also, if you are reading this and want to catch some Striper, send me a message. I'm not joking at all, book a trip asap. I have not started advertising this since I simply have been too busy guiding for bass, but I am on an AMAZING Striper bite. I am refraining from posting any photos in an effort to avoid any competition on the lake. Last year I had several boats follow me to where I fish and park right on top of me... don't want that again. If you are looking for one of the top fishing guides in Austin and one of the best on Lake Travis give me a shout! The fishing has been good and there is some much I can teach you!

Lake Travis is showing off again! The lake is currently making that transition from the spring shad pattern to the summer pattern where bass move out deeper. Early in the mornings we have been chasing schooling fish that are busting on shad around marinas. This only lasts for the early hours of the day, after that it has been more productive to fish deep. Ledges, points, and underwater humps are the best spots. Mike and his some came out with me and caught a bunch of fish! But the highlight of this trip was this 5.15 pounder Mike caught on a custom football jig I pour. Lake Decker is also fishing well right now, the topwater frog bit early in the morning is especially good this time of year.

Today was another fun trip with Brent and his father Robert out on Lake Travis. This father son duo loves to fish, but don't get out there very often these days. We set out from Cypress Creek Park and ran up towards Sandy Creek to start the trip. There is an area in Sandy Creek that I have been finding schooling fish lately. Robert had a little trouble with casting, so the goal was to give him a cork with some live bait under it and let it drift. I got to the ramp an hour early before my trip to play around with my cast net... turns out I remember how to throw it haha within about 20 throws of the net I had more than enough juvenile Bluegill for the trip. For the rest of the day we bounced around the lake going as far up as the Gnarly Gar. The fishing was very consistent all day long. There really wasn't one magic spot, just a steady pick of fish throughout the day. Typically after lunch time you get that mid day lull, not today. Even after noon the fish kept biting... they certainly weren't eating the paint off the boat, but we finished the day with over 25 fish. The key was good casts though, once the sun peaked out those fish liked the shady side of docks. If you can place a cast close to the dock then you are good! Be patient with your casts since you're drastically more likely to get bit up tight to the docks. Rain was in the forecast for us, but the weather man got it wrong. It ended up being a nice day out. Mostly cloudy which kept us cool! Around 3:30pm we finally got rained on, so we headed to the barn. If you are looking for a fishing guide in Austin I would love to get you out on the water. The bite this year has been very consistent, so let's get out there before the deep summer pattern sets in.

I have been very busy guiding this week! I love fishing and can't get enough of it, so no complaints here! Tuesday morning I had the pleasure of fishing with a teacher from the same school my girlfriend teaches at. The pressure was on to put them on fish, and boy did Lake Travis deliver! For fear of over exaggerating we caught around 35 fish for a morning half day trip. Right now the fish are schooling and if you know the right places to target them and can use your sonar effectively you can really load the boat. Every spot we hit that morning produced fish with several good size bass in the mix. The trip went so well it gave me some inspiration to fish that evening. Every Tuesday in the summer Texas Tournament Zone puts on an evening fishing tournament out of Mansfield Dam park. I entered it solo and sure enough the fish were still there! I ended up catching a 5.5 pounder and WON the tournament fishing solo! I also fished today with an evening half day trip and the bite was almost as good! We caught over 20 fish, and that was with a dad and his 8 year old daughter. Naturally the quantity of fish landed goes way up with experienced anglers, but honestly I get more satisfaction out of teaching new anglers how to fish and seeing the joy of fighting a big bass. The bite I have been on is a lot of swimbait fishing... The benefits of this is you don't need to cast super accurately, the fish hit the bait hard so there is no mistaking the bites, and the numbers of fish are way up. The bass on Travis will continue to do this for another month until they move out deep offshore. Now is a great time to get out there while the weather is good and the fish are biting. Tight Lines!

Yesterday morning I had the pleasure of taking Caleb and his son Clayton out on Lake Travis. Some of my favorite trips are when parents bring their kids with... watching them hook and land a fish all by themselves is awesome. The fishing is still very good on Lake Travis. If you are considering a trip I highly recommend in getting out there within the next 3 weeks. Once it starts to get hot and the boat traffic gets heavy on the weekends, the bite tends to only be good in the morning and evening. After about 10AM that bite dies off heavily and the fish get lethargic. Yesterday that was not the case. We started by running up into Sandy Creek and trying a couple spots. The first area we hit definitely didn't lack fish. They were busting the surface all around us, we probably saw over 100 fish jump. Despite this the bite was tough, we caught one that spit up shad but they were super tiny shad, like less than an inch long. Those small Keitech swimbaits I talk about work great, but even those were slightly too big for those fish. I have a few idea how to get them to bite, so stay tuned and I will report back if I can trick them into eating a lure. The morning was very cloudy and humid out, but around 8:30am the sun peaked out and the bite turned on. We bounced around to several spots I have been finding schooling fish and it was a steady pick through out the day. The combination of the sun coming out and a little bit of wind really turned on the bite and made the trip! We had a blast after that! A couple tips for you... if you are out there early start with a moving bait. I personally like to throw a little larger swimbaits like a big Keitech Fat Swing Impact, a Heddon spook, an underspin, or a chrome rattle trap. With the fish being more active early you can get away messing around with the moving bait of your choice. Once it gets a little later in the morning I have been throwing two things... a 4" Keitech Easy shiner on a small lead head, and an Alabama rig. I like to fish them fairly slow, but something I have noticed is that every once and a while you'll have a problem with the fish biting the bait and missing it, or biting off the tail. Speed up your retrieve and don't give those fish a chance to really look at the bait before hitting it. You can get bit fishing jigs and plastics too, but right now while the shad are doing their thing the moving bait bite is way more productive. If you are considering a fishing guide in Austin give me a call. Lake Travis is fishing well and I would love to put you on some fish!