Dec 28 2020
mason murphy
Fry
Reservation Number : 26799
Property Name : Alysha Ranch
Reservation Date : 12/27/2020 PM -
Total Fish/Sizes : 14
Lures Used : Senkos, Swimbaits, Spinner/Chatter/Crank
The winds were screaming but that didn't stop us from enjoying the day and catching plenty of fish. My son and I fished from 12:30 to 6 pm. We used the jon boat the ranch offers and mainly fished the middle of the lake in deeper water from the dam as we slowly 'anchor drifted' towards the shallow end (never actually fished the shallow water).
We immediately got on a couple of nice fish in the 3lb range on chartreuse/white spinner baits and chatter baits. Our approach with the colder water and windy conditions was to throw lots of baits until we found a pattern. We caught one on a medium diving crankbait (fat A - bass colored) and caught quite a few on wacky rigged senko's.
The pattern materialized around 4:30 pm when we circled back around to where we started, near the middle of the dam and began casting east (away from the house). The time was right, the bait was right, and we proceeded to catch solid slot fish on two different types of swimbaits darn near every cast. What fun!
A few observations:
- we never really banked fish. I assumed this time of year, most fish would be stacked up in deeper water along the channel. Regardless, in the spring and summer, this property is so very fishable between the shoreline and the deeper channel.
- what also makes this place a joy to fish is how little moss/grass we had to tangle with. On a few cast here and there, I had to remove very light moss off my lures, but aside from those rare occassions, it was a non issue. This makes the entire lake very fishable.
- a minor thing, but the transom on the onwners jon boat was completely rotted out and the aluminum where the trolling motor mount is, was actually cracked on both sides. I took a 2-3 foot branch (inch, inch and a half diameter) from the ground and actually braced this area for greater support by driving my trolling motor mount 'screws' into the branch itself. Without this, the trolling motor mount would have been unstable, especially on a windy day like we had.