Reservation Number : 33304
Property Name : BlackJack Ranch
Reservation Date : 07/23/2022 All Day -
Total Fish/Sizes : 44 with 20 harvested; 1.5 - 3#
Lures Used : dropshot, flukes, solid-body frog

Ron Dupree and I returned to BlackJack Ranch for another session a week after we landed 44 bass in a morning.  Although we again caught 44 bass (but it took 2 hours longer), the lures and techniques that worked were vastly different.  Unlike last Saturday, this trip didn’t have a good topwater bite and there was no crankbait/chase-bait action at all.  And while dropshot was still a productive technique, it didn’t dominate like last week.  Yesterday, dropshotting yielded a good number of bass from open water and the edges of submerged vegetation but the bass tended to be small.  The most success with respect to both numbers and size came from working weightless flukes and solid-body frogs through the coontail(?) clumps in water less than 5 feet deep. Fewer of the shallow-water bass were very skinny compared to last week. Later in the day, bass that had been jumping at dragonflies earlier started to herd minnows against the bank and explode on them.  Unfortunately, these episodes were widely scattered in time and location and we wern’t able to put our lures in the right place at the right time. We ended up catching 44 and harvesting 20 (6-13”).  Our largest few fish of the day were about 3#. Although it was sort of a grinding day, you can’t complain with the quality of the fishing for a hot July day. As Steve commented after our last report, hopefully some effective harvesting will increase the size profile of this great property.

The lake level has dropped another couple of inches since last week and the well is now flowing water into the SW corner of the lake. The dropping water level means the tops of some of the coontail in the shallowest water are just starting to bend over creating a thicker canopy.  This is restricted to the shallowest northern end of the lake and some very localized areas around the margins.