Reservation Number : 34762
Property Name : Deer Trail Ranch
Reservation Date : 01/14/2023 PM - 01/15/2023 AM
Total Fish/Sizes : 8 caught 2 culled
Lures Used : Chatterbait, Texas Rigged plastics, Swimbaits

My almost 7 year old son and I went out to Deer Trail (for the first time) to mostly camp and squeeze in a bit of fishing, and overall it was a great experience. We arrived just after noon, camped that night, and left just before lunch on Saturday. Wind was never an issue – in fact it was slick calm all of Saturday and blue bird skies so I think that might’ve negatively impacted the bite.

Stunning property with plenty to distract you from the worries back in the city. Boat is in great condition, property is beautiful, wild life is crazy, and the fishing was decent. I only say decent because it dropped to 37 degrees that night so the fishing was slow, but that didn’t bother us too much. We still managed to hook into a few good bites. I kept thinking we were going to be pulling up some monsters but most everything we caught was inbetween 16-18” but goodness these bass fought harder than any other bass I have fought recently. They were beautiful fish too. Really dark, almost black backs, dark spotted lateral lines and a beautiful green to white hue to their bellies. I saw on some reports folks catching 5-8 pounder and can’t imagine what those fights were like. Even the 2 we culled were fat and realyl feisty. Everything returned had really fat bellies on them – nothing looked skinny or unhealthy in the lake.

Visibility was surprisingly far. My guess was 4 feet or so? I was surprised to see such nice clarity in an East Texas-ish property. Used to that being more chocolate milk type situation but it was lightly tea stained and not too murky at all.

All fish hammered shad look alike profiles and all fish came about 20’ off the shore. We’d anchor down and pitch parallel to drop offs and points and sure enough the fish were there. Missed a couple at the boat on lazy retrievals but again we were just having fun and camping was the primary event we were after. At one point something followed my black/blue jig all the way up to the boat. I couldn’t get a clear look at it but it was really, really big. My guess was maybe a catfish, or could’ve been a huge bass.

At night we could hear tons and tons of coyotes and some other crazy chirp-whiny sound that I guess I could only pin down as maybe the nutria? No idea what sound a nutria makes but I’ve also never heard whatever noise was being made before. Saw and heard (tail slapping) a LOT of signs of the beaver(s), saw deer tracks everywhere but never saw them even when my son was so excited to get up and explore that we woke up at 4:45am to start coffee and hot cocoa!

I now want to visit here and Timber with a more fish-focused trip in mind to really try and spend time hammering the water to search for more of these feisty beasts.

As always, thanks PWF and the landowners for allowing us to make fun memories on these beautiful properties!