Apr 05 2021
Jason Owens
Fry
Member Since :
2018
Number of Posts :
38
Reservation Number : 27866
Property Name : Hickory Creek Ranch Lakes
Reservation Date : 04/04/2021 All Day -
Total Fish/Sizes : Too many - up to 4lbs
Lures Used : Senko, lipless, swimbait/underspin, roadrunner for crappie
We fished Hickory Creek on Sunday 4-4 with a group of 5. My son and I fished out of the club boat. My brother/member Nick Owens fished out of 20ft Skeeter with Guest/Brother Darrel Owens and his wife Jamie.
My son and I started with senkos around the dam and started catching bass. We caught only a few around the brush piles by casting around them with lipless cranks. The area around the island proved to be the best spot producing the biggest bass and a ton of crappie. Crappie were biting bass baits, but we tied on road runners and started catching them every cast. Later in the day we stumbled on even more crappie in the area between the dam and the shallow area with all the giant stumps.
For me, the swimbait with the underspin produced the larger bass and clued me in to where the crappie were, but the senkos got the most bites. On the day we culled 91 crappie and 23 bass under 14”. We caught about 35 bass over 14”. My scale was broken so I didn't get exact weight but our biggest bass landed was about 4lb. My brother say they lost a 5+ at the boat. He can probably reply to this post and add some more info about their experience fishing out of the big boat.
This lake is awesome and was a great first PWF trip for our guests.
Apr 05 2021
Nick Owens
Fry
Member Since :
2020
Number of Posts :
7
Our group fishing out of the big boat did well on watermelon red baby brush hogs with a 3/16 oz tungsten. My older brother landed a 3.5lb, a 3lb, and what looked to be well over 5 shook off at the boat on them. The bass would often hit on the drop so stay ready. We found the larger fish in the 8’ – 9’ depth near the damn with a lot of cover. Wacky rigged green pumpkin senkos did some work on smaller bass around the dock and banks near the edge of the algae bloom/grass. After catching some crappie on back to back cast near the island I switched to a small roadrunner jig head with a Mr. Crappie Scizzor Shad in pearl white and proceeded to catch crappie on almost every cast using a steady retrieve on a small ultralight spinning combo. Those crappie fight like bass or even better and it was a blast. We did just as good using Monkey Milk Bobby Garland strollers. Switching to a 3.75 Rage Swimmer with an underspin produced bass and crappie on just about every cast. If they missed it on the first strike you could pause your retrieve and they would come back and get it a second or even a third time. The action was better in the evening between 2 and 4:30pm. Amazing trip and a great property.