Family wedding plans interfered with me participating in the group trip to Cody Ranch this weekend, so I booked it for yesterday - Twin Lakes in the morning and Hart Lakes in the afternoon.  I started there at 7:00 in a gentle, but steady rain, which lasted until 10:00; by that time, I had caught 9 bass with only one "under" of about a pound. Only one was in the timber; the rest were in the "dollar pads." Fifteen were between 2.5 and 3 pounds, and hit either topwater frogs, a wacky-rigged Senko, or a spinnerbait. I LOVE fishing frogs (I missed a few good hits, too)! The sun came out at 10:00, and at 10:15 I boated a real "fattie" - just shy of 7.5 lbs, but only 22.5 inches long. She hit a Texas-rigged 10" lizard in a downed treetop. When I unhooked her, I found the tail of a small fish (bass?) protruding from her gullet (photos below). I finished the morning a little later with one more 3-pounder on a frog. Water temp was 64.9^° all over the lake, but visibility was only about 12" (maybe 18" in the creek).

At noon, I trailered to Upper Hart. The afternoon proved to be quite a bit different from the morning - sunny skies, but the strong south wind tried to blow me off the lake. I was fishing for my freezer, and caught 16 harvest fish. One was a dink, but all the others were between 13 and 14" long and fought really hard. They hit wacky-rigged Senkos, 10-inch lizards, and Rattletraps. The weeds at Upper Hart are getting close to the surface in many places, and will be a problem soon. Water temp was 64^°, and the visibility was 3-4 feet.

The road was OK into North Twin, as they've put in a lot of gravel - but it was pretty soft past North Twin to the South Twin dam. It's easy to see where road washouts have occurred recently….same with the north road to the Hart - Peach Creek/Crabgrass fork. I had no problem getting to Upper Hart once I found the right road - at the hilltop split before the cattle guard on the Hart Lakes road, look for a little area of fresh, white gravel and - maybe - my tire tracks. One of the ranch hands told me that the road to Lower Hart is "iffy."  I drove it as far as the two oaks, and had no problem. Maybe it's soft at the lake. Thankfully, I had all-wheel drive to launch and trailer my pond boat at South Twin; no such problems at Upper Hart.

There were Canada Geese all over the ranch…they were nice to hear in place of the usual water turkey sounds. All-in-all, it was a great day at a great property.

Posted By: Tom Dillon