Dean French and I fished Weston SW July 13 from 5:15 to 9:30.  Air temperature was 104 degrees and the water surface temperature was 92 degrees until sundown when it plunged to 91 degrees.  We took our own boat that has a depth finder on it.  Here’s what we learned about the depths:  The southern 1/3 of the lake is quite shallow (4 ft or less) and has just enough weed on the surface in many areas to make fishing a hassle.  The west side from the boat launch to the island is also pretty shallow.  The upper half or two-thirds of the lake has depths in the 8 to 10 foot range and the middle goes down to 14 to 16 feet.  Due to the water temperature, we decided to fish in the deeper areas of the lake until dark and then try for topwater action after that.

We primarily used crank baits that went down 6 to 10 feet.  We ended up catching 7 bass that we harvested.  We released four back into the water and “professionally” released three at the boat.  The good news:  I caught a 24” largemouth that by my calculation should have weighed about 8 pounds.  Later I caught a 22 1/2” largemouth that should have weighed about 6 1/2 pounds.  We used a yardstick to measure our fish; so, we are accurate as to size.

Our topwater action didn’t work with the exception on one nice bass on a Pop-R from Dean.  My guess is that the bass had not come into the shallows as soon as we thought they might.

One last note:  this lake has good water color, meaning the water is NOT CLEAR.  I will return to this lake again