Reservation Number : 30424
Property Name : Salt Lick Lake
Reservation Date : 11/16/2021 All Day -
Total Fish/Sizes : 35, 33 bass up to 3lbs 13ozs, 2 large crappie up to 3 lbs 1oz
Lures Used : sqbill, swimbait

With my wife about to start trial and my kids about to get out of school (which means I have to parent and stuff), I decided to take advantage and head out to my favorite lake in the club, Salt Lick.  This isn’t the place I go to catch a hammer.  This is a place I go to relax, chill out, and put some bass in the boat while having an easy drive home.  Reminds me of the lakes my dad and I built growing up and puts me at ease. To top it all off – I got my PB crappie (and then broke that PB soon thereafter). 

1. Arrived at 12pm and was off the water by 5:30pn. Water was 62, it was very windy out of the South, water was clear up to nearly 5 feet.  
2. I hit the timber immediately as the wind was very gusty and I didn’t want to anchor.  The back side of the lake catches very little wind when it is directly out of the South so I took shelter. 
3. Used a chart sqbill and caught 12 very quickly – couple of decent ones mixed in, but the size I wanted wasn’t quite there. 
4. I decided to mix it up and go with a swimbait with a chart jighead, and while I wasn’t hitting 10+ per hour like I was with the sqbill, I was getting some better fish so I stuck with it. 
5. I tried using a diving crankbait per the prior report and my previous success with it, but wasn’t able to find the optimal depth and since I was having success with the swimbait, I decided not to eff with it. 
6. Wind chilled out a bit so I just worked my way around the lake as the fish seemed pretty scattered.  I saw some holding at 20ft+, some at 15, 10, and 5 feet.  I worked the swimbait almost like a jig at times, letting it fall and then yo-yo’d it, both retrieves worked – a straight retrive was the least successful. 
7. All the bait balls I saw on top last time were much deeper this time, not sure why on this partly cloudy, warm day. 
8. Hit the timber one last time before it was time to leave and I got on a large crappie measuring 17 inches and weighing almost 3lbs.  Caught another couple of bass and then hit another crappie that was just over 3lbs and a hair logner than the first – these are the largest crappie I’ve ever caught (besting the one I caught at Pecan Gap earlier in the year, and they were much thicker).  They fought like hell.  
9. I saw several crappie stacks throughout the lake, but in different spots than I had seen before – tough to pin them down except the ones by the timber, but if you have good electronics (I don’t), you could probably make a good day of crappie fishing here.