(Note:  I posted this before noticing that Dave had already posted his report....sorry, y;all.)

Dave May and I fished Pecan Gap yesterday afternoon. Due to his work schedule and my heat intolerance, we didn’t get to the lake until almost 2:30 or so. After a cool, overcast morning, the afternoon ended up being mostly sunny. The forecast high of 87°ended up being well up into the 90s, and the predicted SE wind @ 5-10 mph was mostly either light and variable, or calm. Still, it was a nice respite from the 100°+ heat indices of the last couple of weeks!

The water temp was in the low 90s when we got there, went down as low as 86°, and then back up to just over 91°. I was surprised to see that the lake level was down about 2 feet with a couple of the humps showing as small islands - but the visibility was almost 2 feet in most places, I guess because of the all the submerged vegetation. It looked to me like a combination of coontail moss and what I call “string grass,” which might be Southern Naiad.  At any rate, the stuff is not as bad as filamentous algae, but is still a pain in the neck and totally blew away the term, “weedless lure.” It was matted all around the shoreline, with some mats forming away from the bank. We did see a little American Pondweed in the back of some of the shallowest water. We couldn’t get any type of lure back to the boat without weeds on it - not even HB frogs - except in the very deepest water, just south of the dam.

False:  I could go on and on about how we “killed ‘em” all afternoon, including several over 6 pounds. True:  But we didn’t, so I won't. We kept at it until the heat drove us off around 5:30 or 6:00, when we retreated to the car for its heavenly AC. Until that time, neither of us had even felt a fish. Other than a few minnows (baby threadfin shad?) at the feeders, the only life we saw consisted of big turtles and one small heron (We never saw it get a fish, either).

Once we had cooled down and rehydrated, we went back out, anticipating a good evening topwater bite once the major solunar period started at 6:34. No such thing came to pass, though. Our results were just as bad as they had been before our break.  A big thunderstorm had been approaching us from the northeast, with a lot of lightning and thunder. For over an hour, we had been watching heavy rain falling from its clouds, so when the wind came up and it started sprinkling on us, we finally called it quits around 8:15. There’s no way we wanted to be on the water with graphite lightning rods in our hands. The only fish we had encountered all afternoon were probably bream nibbling at our finesserigged Senkos.

In the past, my fishing success rate has been knocked down more than a few pegs a time or two, but for the first time on any PWF lake, neither of us even felt a good fish, and we didn’t hook any, much less boat one.

We got beaten.  Zipped.  Zeroed.  Washed out.  Busted. Totally skunked.  We had thrown a lot of different lure types and colors, deep and shallow, fast and slow, but nothing made any difference - not even finesse techniques or deadsticking. Our “go-to” baits must have  ‘gone to” somewhere else, for they produced nothing at all. By the time we got the boat trailered and started loading our gear, the storm looked like it would bypas us to the east, and it even stopped sprinkling - but we decided to finish loading up and drive home instead of re-launching and going back out to fish the again-calm water in the cool of the evening. We did drive through the same bad thunderstorm system between north of Valley View all the way through Lewisville. There was no hail, but a lot of extremely heavy rain, and (according to KRLD, a cross-wind of up to 60 mph. By the time I got home, there was about 4” of water sloshing around in my little pond boat. (We could have fished in it with no less success than we had encountered at Pecan Gap, but with a lot less frustration from weeds!) We know the big girls are in there, but for some reason, we never even contacted a dink. There were a lot of shad feeding when the feeders went off, and we saw something attack a few of them on the surface once, but we weren’t anywhere close to it. Still, it was a beautiful afternoon, and it did beat working.

What worked:  Not a single, blessed thing.

What didn’t:  5” wacky-rigged Senkos in black/blue, green pumpkin, bubble gum, white, and watermelon/red flake; T-rigged 7” Senkos in black/blue flake, green pumpkin/black flake, and watermelon/red flake; 10” ribbon-tail worms, both green pumpkin on a weighted swim bait hook and red/grey on a C-rig; shad Whopper Plopper, size 130; single- and tandem-spin spinnerbaits, bladed jigs in white and green perch; 1/8 oz. black jig with 6” black pork eel; shallow squarebill crankbaits in shad and green; deeper crankbaits in crawfish and chartreuse/blue back; green/white hollow body frogs; a frog back/white belly popping frog; white Sprinkler Frog; ¾ oz chrome/black back Rattletrap; weightless craw, T-rigged; and a few others that I can’t remember now.

Hint:  If you’ve never been to Pecan Gap, FM 371 makes a big curve to the right (east) about 2 miles north of US 82. Then, in about ½ mile, FM371 makes a 90 turn to the left (north). There is only a small sign indicating that 371 turns left (at arrow below).  If you keep straight and miss the turn, you’ll end up in the small town of Callisburg, 7.0 miles from US 82. There, the paved road you’re on ends in at a “T” and continues straight as a gravel road. You’ll then need to turn around and go back toward 82 and turn right onto 371. The turnoff to the lake is just past a small community named Mule Run on 371. (Even having been there last October, I missed that turn to the north on 371.)

Posted By: Tom Dillon