Lake Amistad Bass Report

I spent last week on Lake Amistad chasing the big bass in preparation for the 3rd and final stop of the Bassmaster Central Opens.

My first day on the water was Sunday Sept. 22. I started out fishing some of the main lake points near Diablo East boat ramp. I was looking for some of the ledges in about 25 feet of water. After hitting a couple points I fished a little shallower and caught a 16" bass in about 5 feet of water but couldn’t get any other bites. I then ran to a point near the dam and fished a couple hours with no bites. I just couldn’t get bite on the deep ledges so I started looking for some stuff in the backs of creeks and never went back to the ledges the rest of the week.

I made my way to Exxon Cove and began throwing a swim bait. I tried a number of them, but the blue gill bait made by 3:16 Lures was my favorite. I saw a few bass follow it up but it the biggest bass I caught on it was about 10" long and just slightly larger than the bait. By late afternoon I had saw a lot of big bass but still didn’t hook up with anything impressive, but that all changed on day 2 of pre-fishing.

On Monday I woke up and got on the water at prior to sunrise (7:05am). I decided to head back into Exxon Cove where I had saw several large bass. We were right on the edge of a little storm system and had a few sprinkles and some cloud cover until about 7:30 am. Everyone had been talking about throwing heavy jigs. I had tried it for a while, but in the hydrilla they kept getting hung up. At about 8:30 I changed up to an Akins Jig with a Paca Craw trailer. Around 8:45 I hooked into my biggest bass ever. Although it was big it didn’t put up much of a fight. The first fish of the day was a 23.5" bass. I was throwing this lighter jig into the deeper water in the middle of the cove. On the bottom was some hydrilla and some brush and trees. I let the jig slowly fall and I was able to effectively work it over the tops of the trees and hydrilla without getting hung up or buried in the vegetation. About 20 minutes later I hooked up with another decent bass. It put up a little better fight. I landed it and it measured about 22.5" making it my second largest bass. I continued the same pattern for a while and after a hour or so landed another bass measuring 21". After another hour I caught yet another bass that measured 19.5". I had fished about a 1/4 mile of the cove and picked up several nice bass. I didn’t want to hit the area too hard to I moved on trying to apply this pattern to other parts of the lake. After leaving Exon Cove the fishing really slowed down for me. I did manage to land several other keeper size bass. Things were looking good. I estimate a 25 to 27 pound sack for the day.

On Tuesday and Wednesday was a different story for me. I did go back into Exxon just to check the area and see if anyone else was fishing it and stuck around long enough to catch one bass then leave. I had been searching for other areas just as productive with no luck. I found a couple humps out offshore that had potential. There were a lot of schooling bass and vegetation, but the size of the bass there wasn’t going to win the tournament. I did find submerged bridge that was holding some bass, but I chose not to fish it too hard since it was the day prior to the tournament. I spent some time watching my new Hummingbird 997c with the side imaging. I’ll have to post some screen captures of the bridge and some of the cover I was fishing. It was pretty cool to see how detailed the images of the bottom were.

On day one of the tournament I went back to Exxon Cove to pound it hard. I drew boat number 2 so I knew I’d be the first one there. It wasn’t but a couple casts and my co-angler had a keeper in the boat. About 20 minutes later I landed my first keeper. Nothing to brag about at only 16.5". Shortly after I watched things fall apart for me. I had a big bass hooked up that wrapped me up into a tree top. A few cast later I hooked up with another bass that looked to be in the 5 pound range come off half way to the boat. I just didn’t get a good hook set and it was all I could to do keep up with it as it was running toward the boat. Then about 50 feet farther down the bank another bass in the 5 pound range hit and ran towards the boat before coming off. I just lost would could have been a top 5 sack disappear before my eyes. By 9am the bite had really slowed down. At 11am we left the area each with 1 bass and headed to the bridge. We spent the rest of that day dropshotting the bridge. The fish weren’t real big until around 2pm. My partner caught a bass that had to be around 21" and preceded to fill his limit. Slowly, I started to add fish to my live well as well. We were due back at 3:15 and about 2:30 I hooked into a 20" bass. It made me feel a lot better about the day. I now had 4 bass in the boat and a half hour left to fish. On what I decided would be my last cast I hooked into another large bass. It took me straight into the guardrail and hung me up. I ended the day with 8-14 and my co-angler had 12-6.

On day two I was second to the last boat. I had the same game plan as day one. Right off the bat my co-angler stuck a 22" bass. The bite seemed to be a lot slower today. After a while I caught a 16" bass, but that was my only bite in Exxon. We left by 9:30 and I only had one bass while my co-angler had two. I headed for the bridge. After a couple hours I was culling fish, but didn’t really have anything with any size to it. Since we were nearly the last boat out we weren’t due back until 5:15. I was hoping the big fish would move in that afternoon, but they didn’t. I had a 5 fish limit that all measured between 15.5" and 16". I was teaching my co-angler how to dropshot and he finished the day with 4 bass. At the weigh-in I finished the day with 8-12 while my co-angler finished with 9-10. We were both far from making the cut to fish day 3. My partner from day one (Jeff Huff)was paired with Royce Dennington and caught another good sack to make the cut and went on to finish in 22nd place on the c-angler side.

While I fell short on my tournament expectations I at least had one day where I saw the potential for a excellent sack of fish. It seemed you could catch bass fishing just about how ever you wanted. There were many tactics use throughout the tournament. You just had to be in an area that held the larger bass to do well. The day one leader boated over 27 pound of fish, but on day two had only one weighing just shy of 3 pounds. Some of the locals said the weights seemed a little low for Amistad. Trent Huckaby of Stockton Texas won with a 3 day total of 53-12. If you ever have a chance to fish lake Amistad I highly recommend doing so.