THE BASS COLLEGE

November 21st report

Fishing on Lake Conroe is fair to good. The water is clear and the water level is a little above pool at 201.14. The water temperature is running around 68 degrees in the main lake.

Black bass fishing has been fair to good and Bass can be found early shallow around structures, boat docks and brush and riprap using Rat-L-Traps or crawfish lures. Bass are also 12 to 16 feet in deep brush. Carolina rigged plastic worms in green colors like Watermelon green, Pumpkin seed or black with a 5/0 hooks are working well. Deep diving crank baits chartreuse and blue are also working well.

Crappie fishing is pretty good. They are in water 15 to 20 feet deep and over brush at 11 to 15 feet deep. Also around the 1097 bridge pylons and around boat docks. Minnows and also jigs in one sixteenth and one thirty second ounce are the best baits right now.

Update

The Toyota Texas Bass Classic (TTBC), held October 16-18 on Lake Conroe, successfully wrapped up Sunday evening with the crowning of the inaugural Professional Anglers Association (PAA) Tournament Series World Champion, Dave Lefebre. Lefebre won the Toyota Texas Bass Classic in dramatic fashion, catching only four ounces more than second place Andy Montgomery. Lefebre’s winning total was 46 lbs-12 ozs.

The TTBC featured an elite field of 60 anglers from around the world. All anglers were qualified members of the PAA. The tournament was a no-entry fee event with a purse of $500,000.

Two Conroe area anglers, Sean Hoernke of the Woodlands, and Russell Cecil of Willis, finished in the top 20. Hoernke reeled in the big bass of the tournament, 9 lbs-8 ozs.

“I caught all my fish on the rocks…rocky bottom, rip rap areas. I caught just about every one of my fish on a 3/8 ounce, black/blue jig that I make myself,” says Hoernke.

His 9 lbs-8 ozs. big bass was caught Saturday using the jig fishing off rocks in three feet of water, with a creek channel close by. “In pre-practice I caught a 10 lb and another 8 lb. bass in the same area. It was obvious that the location held a lot of big fish,” said Hoernke.

Russell Cecil grew up fishing Lake Conroe. “I thought I had a better than average chance to do well because I had more knowledge of the lake,” said Cecil. His goal was to make the top 10, but finished 13.

Cecil’s fishing strategy included fishing several different types of cover, including rocks, shallow cover, and some offshore structure spots.

“I gambled a little bit; I really wanted to win the tournament. I had a limit by 10:30 in the morning the first day and I knew that there weren’t near as many fish offshore, but the ones that were there, their average size was better. I spent the rest of my day fishing structure spots trying, hoping to catch a 6 to 10 pounder.” Unfortunately for him he never got that bite. His biggest fish was 4 lbs-8 ozs. the second day.

He caught seven of his fish on a H2O shad pattern crankbait. “In the fall the shad pattern seems to be the most successful for me. The fish start to feed on the shad in preparation for the winter.” The other fish were caught on a green/pumpkin, 8-inch lizard. “When I was fishing around docks, I flipped the lizard. I threw the crankbait on the structure spots and shallow cover brush piles.”

Only three lakes in Texas have produced more ShareLunker entries than Conroe. And it has more — almost double or more — the entries of more famous (and much larger) bass fisheries such as Toledo Bend, Amistad, Choke Canyon and Falcon.

It’s not just 13-pluses coming from Conroe. For the past couple of years, anglers there have landed beau-coup bass weighing 7-10 pounds — great fish.

That a hard-fished reservoir within an hour’s drive of nearly 5 million people is producing that quality of largemouth bass is a testament to several positive things, and a bit of serendipity.

A little sunshine

The water of the San Jacinto and the adjunct creeks is fertile — tannin-stained, typical of East Texas waterways, it carries a good load of nutrients leeched from the deteriorating organic debris in the watershed.

That fertility is the base of a food chain producing abundant threadfin shad and other forage to feed up-chain predators such as largemouth bass.

Conroe’s largemouths have great genetics. The reservoir has for years been stocked with Florida-strain largemouths, a subspecies that has the genetic predisposition to grow much larger than the northern largemouth subspecies native to the San Jacinto rivershed.

Conroe’s first stocking of Florida-strain bass came in 1979, and it has had regular injections since.

The integration of Florida genetics then has set the table for today’s booming fishery in Conroe.

More so, it’s a good bet a bunch of the big bass being taken these days are the result of heavy Florida stocking this decade.

According to Mark Webb, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department inland fisheries supervisor who oversees Conroe’s fishery management, TPWD and the Lake Conroe Restocking Association have put more than 1.7 million Florida-strain bass fingerlings into Conroe since 2000.

With largemouth bass reaching their top-end weights when they hit 7-9 years of age, odds are decent that some of them taken lately from Conroe came from those stockings.

Conservative fishing regulations put in place by TPWD fisheries managers and a wide-spread catch-and-release ethic among anglers means enough largemouths live long enough to grow to trophy size.

Trouble in paradise

But there’s another factor in the rise of Conroe, and that’s where it gets a little touchy.

The lake owes much of its thriving bass population, and perhaps the greatly improved catches of big bass over the past few months, to the rise and fall of hydrilla.

Hydrilla, an invasive aquatic plant, is, in moderate amounts, tremendously beneficial to bass fisheries. The plants, which can grow in water as much as a dozen feet deep and form thick stands, provide outstanding bass habitat. Hydrilla is particularly beneficial to young bass — fry, fingerlings — as it gives them cover from predators and provides a rich forage base of invertebrates and smaller fish.

Lakes holding a fair coverage of aquatic plants such as hydrilla and native plants such as pondweed see much higher survival of young bass than do lakes where there is little cover. And that recruitment of young bass is crucial to building and sustaining a healthy fishery.

The problems is, while hydrilla can be a boon to bass, it is a bane for boaters and lakeside landowners. The plant can grow into mats so thick boats can’t motor through them, making Conroe a hydrilla battleground for three decades.

In the early 1980s, after hydrilla exploded to cover more than 8,000 acres of the reservoir (rimming the lake’s entire shoreline) and made fishing great but landowners frustrated, anti-hydrilla forces convinced the Texas Legislature to pass a bill (over the objections of TPWD fisheries managers and, later, a lawsuit from angling interests) mandating the stocking of 300,000 or so Asian grass carp into the lake.

The hyper-active vegetarian grass carp demolished the hydrilla ... and every other piece of aquatic vegetation in the lake. Conroe’s fishing success plummeted as the hydrilla disappeared and the fish had nowhere to hide.

With hydrilla and other cover gone, recruitment of young bass, crappie and other fish took a steep dive. By the mid-1980s, Conroe’s excellent fishing had withered.

Then, hydrilla and some stands of native aquatic vegetation began coming back in the late-1990s and — surprise — so did the lake’s bass fishery.

Future uncertain

By the early part of this decade, hydrilla acreage ebbed and grew — from 2005 through much of ’08, it covered 700 to 2,000 acres while native pondweed was established in about 1,800.

Again, the plants caused heartburn among nearby residents and, again, grass carp was bought (this time by the Lake Conroe Association) and stocked into the lake to “control” the vegetation.

They did. This past June, a survey found less than 3 acres of hydrilla in the lake — down from 2,000 acres at the start of the year. And native aquatics were eaten, too — down to less than 400 acres from 1,800.

How this loss of crucial, if bothersome, aquatic vegetation impacts Lake Conroe’s bass fisheries in coming years remains to be seen.

But, right now, Conroe’s one of the hottest big-bass lakes in the state.

ATHENS, Texas—The latest Toyota ShareLunker had a short ride to its new quarters at the Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center: It was caught from a private lake in Henderson County only a few miles away.

Paul Detwiler of Tyler was fishing in five feet of water on November 16 when the big bass attacked his Strike King lipless crankbait. The fish weighed 14.43 pounds and was 27.5 inches long and 21.75 inches in girth.

Detwiler’s fish is the second entry into the Toyota ShareLunker program this season and only the ninth ShareLunker ever to be caught during the month of November. It is the first entry from a private lake during that month.

Anyone legally catching a 13-pound or larger largemouth bass between October 1 and April 30 can enter it into the ShareLunker program by calling program manager David Campbell at (903) 681-0550 or paging him at (888) 784-0600 and leaving a call-back number including area code. It’s best to repeat the number at least twice, since reception is often poor in remote areas.

ShareLunker entries are used in a selective breeding program at the Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center (TFFC) in Athens. Some of the offspring from these fish are stocked back into the water body from which they were caught. Other ShareLunker offspring are stocked in public waters around the state in an attempt to increase the overall size and growth rate of largemouth bass in Texas.

Anglers entering fish into the Toyota ShareLunker program will receive a free replica of their fish, a certificate and ShareLunker clothing and be recognized at a banquet at the Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center in Athens. In addition, if a Texas angler catches the largest entry of the year, that person will receive a lifetime fishing license.

For complete information and rules of the ShareLunker program, tips on caring for big bass and a recap of last year’s season, see www.tpwd.state.tx.us/sharelunker. The site also includes a searchable database of all fish entered into the program along with pictures where available.

The Toyota ShareLunker Program is made possible by a grant to the Texas Parks & Wildlife Foundation from Gulf States Toyota. Toyota is a long-time supporter of the Foundation and Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, providing major funding for a wide variety of education, fish, parks and wildlife projects.

Its all about the Hydrilla in Conroe it was 10 years ago when I was there and it is now. We have to keep the home owners from getting their way and destroying the grass.

The Hydrilla days are gone on Conroe. You have to look for the unknown but Conroe has some great fish.

Its completly gone? wow I hadn't heard that. Thats a shame when I was there in 99 the home owners hated it then but if you found it you could load up on bass.

Ya its all gone. They are growing some plants on the north end. Even all the lilly pads are gone its really a boat dock lake are an offshore lake. Im trying to figure where to catch em in January prob out deep like in the summer?

Thats a shame it was a fun lake.