My brother (Philip) and I arrived in Bandera (Cowboy Capital of the World) pulling Phil's boat last Friday afternoon (Sept 21st) to spend the night at Bridle Gate Community (where my wife and I have retirement property with the Medina river in our back yard - too sweet) with intentions of fishing PWF Gallant Elm Creek Ranch Lake at the crack of dawn on Saturday morning. 

Well, it did not exactly work as we planned. Around 11 PM the thunder and lighting show started and then the rains came all night. With the ground already saturated from the previous rains, all the run off created quite a disturbance. Creeks turned into rivers, rivers turned into lakes, lakes turned into oceans (well it seemed like it).................left the retirement property at 5:30 AM pulling the boat and hit the first low water crossing and reality set in, probably not going fishing today! We were stuck at Bridle Gate but needing to be on a lake 22 miles away. 

It took half of Saturday to pass for us to even try crossing one of the low water crossings. Suburban setting up higher than average vehicles helped in navigating the high water. All moving water in the creeks and rivers looked like chocolate milk so our expectations of actually getting to fish in Medina were almost non-existent. No way that lake could survive all the rain and run off enough for us to fish it. 

We arrived at Gallant Elm Ranch after driving down some rug board roads around 1:30 PM to find the lake to have 4 foot of good clarity and plum full. This lake property is the sweetest we have seen in the PWF club lakes. Completely surrounded by huge hills (baby mountains) and extremely secluded. Private Water Fishing - meaning just us - which is way cool! They had only received around 2 inches of rain. We launched the 16 foot grizzly over in a flat rock bed launch area and we were off fishing by 2 PM. 

We fiddled with several baits but didn't hit pay dirt until we got to the crank baits and senkos carolina rigged. Happy Days! Steady hook ups with our fish count ending up at exactly 50 by the time we quit at 7 PM. Nothing to speak of in size but catching aggressive bass none the less. The owners showed us some cell phone photos of a recent 8 1/2 caught there by a PWF angler. Don't remember reading that post LOL. We will definitely go back there to give it the once over again soon. Really like this lake property. Lago Escondido, Tarpley and Gallant Elm all in close proximity to our Bridle Gate Community retirement property. Going to be nice once we get to retire and build….........hopefully in the next 2 years. Can't wait, it will be here before you know it. 

Here is the bait that produced the best results..............Spro Crank Bait - we call it the Miami Dolphin because of the color.