Reservation Number : 37669
Property Name : Hickory Creek Ranch Lakes
Reservation Date : 10/29/2023 All Day - 10/29/2023 All Day
Total Fish/Sizes : 28 bass (15 harvested) + 13 crappie
Lures Used : dropshot, Carolina rig, chatterbait, frog, Zara Spook, shaky head

Ron Dupree and I arrived at Hickory Creek Ranch at dawn with overcast skies, a light breeze, and a balmy 74 temp. The cold front was forecast to arrive around 3 PM. We enjoyed a brief topwater flurry, catching six on a frog and a Zara Spook but that soon transitioned to only short strikes from tiny bass. We then caught a few on chatterbaits from the pier before loading up the boat and heading for the dam area.  Fishing was slow as we toured the dam and drifted up the far shoreline under a moderate breeze from the south.  We finally caught a few on soft plastics including the largest of the day (4#) around the island.  The near shoreline didn’t yield any bass so we went back to a brushpile near the dam.  By this time moving baits were no longer working so we worked a variety of soft plastics around the brush pile and caught a number of bass but more than half were under 14 inches.  Showers arrived around 11AM and the wind abruply shifted to the west and the temp started to fall at 11:30.  Okay.  We’ve enjoyed this many times and kept fishing.  The bass apparantly had different ideas and developed lockjaw.  While Ron continued to cycle through lures looking for what could entice the reluctant bass, I suurendered to reality and put on a tiny crappie jig.  One crappie, two crappie,….thirteen crappie and two bluegill.  Fun to catch but they were all mid-sized rather than the big ones I’ve encountered before.  The wind was now brisk from the north and the temperature had fallen 20 degrees. A few bass started biting again after 2PM including a three pounder and we ended the day with 28 bass (15 harvested) and 13 mid-sized crappie.  The harvest ratio was higher than usual and we never found many of the bigger bass.

Wildlife watching was somewhat diminshed by the weather but we still saw the pair of eagles and a pair of ospreys, a few deer, geese, and either an otter or nutria (too far away in the rain to determine).