My son and I fished 777 in Hondo on Saturday the 15th. Was really anxious to see this place, because it is so well known here in South Texas as a first class facility. The main gate was REALLY easy to find, and the area around the lake is REALLY well manicured and maintained. We entered the main lodge to register, and man what a place! All kinds of exotic trophy mounts, and a room with some really cool firearms displays. The lady who was waiting for us may have been one of the most kind and gracious human beings I have ever met. They had ice, water and sodas ready for us should we have wanted them! The boat ramp is on the opposite side of the lake from the lodge, and is well maintained and easy to get to. The fishing was well…...nonexistent. We landed one bass around 8" and one bass around 10", and that was it. The lake has 3 creeks feeding into it, and I have to say the visibility in this lake was about as poor as any I have ever seen. In the backs of the creeks it averaged about 2 inches and by the dam improved only slightly to about 4"....it was REALLY REALLY REALLY muddy. In the interest of full disclosure we have had some rain here lately, but not enough that I would have thought it would have been this bad. Jackson had one small blowup on a topwater frog around 9am in the small cove by the dam, and the other two dinks were caught on orange/gold crawfish patterned Rat-l-Trap and a Bomber Model A in Firetiger. We threw everything from large glidebaits to small dropshot rigs, and nothing seemed to trigger a bite. There was actually a fair number of fish that were breaking the surface around the lake, and truth be known there is a TON of bait in this lake. So much so that the wind blown shoreline (on the boat ramp side by the dam) resembled fishing at the coast around large schools of finger mullet. Regarding visible cover…there isn't hardly any. 3 maybe 4 pieces of timber stick up above the water in the main lake, but there doesn't seem to be really anything interesting below the surface that we could find. So like the title says the jury's still out, because I think the lake needs some other members to give it a go under better water conditions. Hopefully the water clarity we experienced is not the norm, and was the result of some recent runoff. The upshot is you will see ALL KINDS of cool exotic wildlife. We had Gimsbuck, Gazelle, Some kind of Mountain Goat, Wild Turkey and Whitetail all around us at any given moment…...pretty cool.

Andy

Posted By: Andrew Dear