Lake Bastrop - Missed Adventure

I had really looked forward to a special fishing trip last Thursday and even took vacation from work. My plans were to go to Lake Bastrop and meet up with Scott Dorsey of Throw-n-Thunder Lures. As it turned out on Thursday morning a front was pushing through the area around Bastrop and it didn't look good.  With both of us having over 3 hour drives to get to the lake, we decided that with the forecast it was best to cancel the trip.  I was really looking forward to fishing with Scott for the first time.  Fishing with Scott meant we would be throwing spinner baits and by spinner baits I mean those Killer TNT spinner baits I throw all the time. There was a bit of a problem though as my research on Bastrop didn't find a lot of folks fishing spinner baits or reporting catches on spinner baits.  This meant I had to come up with a game plan to not only fish spinner baits on this lake but also hopefully catch bass on spinner baits.  So why don't we take a look at this game plan and the research I did during its development. 

Lake Bastrop is a 900 acre Power Plant lake that is just north of the town of Bastrop and east of Austin.  After looking at some maps and reading about the type of structures that is found in the lake I had to wonder why folks weren't catching bass on spinner baits.  The question I had to ask myself; were they not fishing spinner baits or were they just not fishing spinner baits right?  This lake has some well defined points leading into deep water, creek channels, some standing timber but most importantly it has grass lines and weed beds.  Now if you can't catch bass on spinner baits in and around grass lines and weed beds then you have to be doing something wrong.  Even though I had never fished the lake I felt like I could put us on bass that would hit spinner baits, and besides the bass in this lake likely had never seen a TNT quad-blade spinner bait. So how did I come up with a game plan on a lake that is a 3+ hour drive away?  I used the tools I had at hand as well as my 50 years of bass fishing experience.  So what are these tools that I speak of having?  They aren't anything special and most of you have the same tools that you have at your disposal on your computer.   In fact I wrote and article a while back on how to plan a trip to new water.  If you have time here is a link to that article - Planning a Trip to New Water

The first thing I did was a Google search on the lake.  I found the Topo Map shown above which was a great start, here is a link to the full size map - Lake Bastrop.  Also the Texas Parks & Wildlife site had some great information about the structure found in the lake at this link - TPWD - Lake Bastrop.  The TPWD site also had some tactics information that could be useful to folks new to the lake.  Next I grabbed  some satellite pictures using Google Maps. Then the last piece of information I searched for were up-to-date fishing reports on the lake.  Here is where I got very little information at all as there just doesn't seem to be a lot of reports.  With all this information in hand, I sat down and started to study.  The one thing I noted was even though this lake is not very big it has just about any type of structure a bass fisherman could want to see.  Not only does it have the ones I mentioned above it also has some mid-lake humps that really look promising to take a look at if everything else failed.

Now I do have to tell you before getting in to the details of my game plan that I originally wasn't going to share this with folks.  I was going to keep it to myself and use it on an upcoming trip to see if I was right.  However I thought why not share it as it might help someone put some bass in the boat and that is what I like to do, help folks catch more bass.  Now I do ask if you read this and decide to give it a try on Bastrop, please give me some feedback. After studying my research materials I decided to start off in the north end of the lake where Scouts Creek enters. The water in the area should be moving a little, but it also might be a little stained as well.  Bastrop is noted for having fairly clear water and we all know that clear water can be tough to fish.  So I was looking for something with a little stain and with all the rains we have been getting it should be stained some at this location.  Looking on Google Maps I could also tell that this area had some standing timber and a flat along the creek channel that looked like it might have some grass on it.  Prime territory for spinner bait fishing if you ask me.  Now if the Scouts Creek area didn't pan out to produce some bass, our next stop would have been heading over to Hot Water Flats and working the weed and grass down towards Tower Point.   There is also supposed to be a stump field in the bend in the creek called Stumpy Bend on our way to Tower Point.   If we hadn't gotten anything to eat our spinner baits by the time we got to the end of Tower Point then we would head to Stumpy Bend and see if anything wanted to eat a jig and craw.  We wouldn't stay at Stumpy Bend long fishing jigs as the goal of the day was to prove we could catch bass on Throw-N-Thunder Spinner Baits.

Now I'm not sure about you folks but this ole boy always likes to have a "Plan C" in his back pocket and so the next stop would be the Mid Lake Flats in behind Aretha's Point.  From the Google Maps picture it seemed that this area had the most weed and grass beds.  Now if this area didn't get our spinner baits eaten, then our time fishing would almost be over as both of us had a long drive home.  Still I didn't want Scott to go home and not catch any bass so I had a "Plan D" in my pocket also.  Plan D didn't include fishing spinner baits but I hoped it would get us a few hits before we had to head home.  This plan called for use to locate and mark a couple of Mid Lake Humps and see if there were fish on them.  If the humps looked good on the fishfinder then I'd toss out a buoy to make them then get on the trolling motor.   We would then fish Carolina Rigged Creme Scoundrel worms by casting them on top of the of the hump and slowly working them down the side.  I had read a lot about this tactic being affective on Bastrop so I was sure hoping if all else failed it would get us some bites.  So there you have it folks, there are the plans I didn't get to use.  I believe that these plans would have put some bass in the boat for Scott and I if we would have had the chance.  I also believe they would work for other folks heading out to Bastrop this time of year to catch some bass.  Hopefully I'll get a chance to take that trip in the near future to find out for myself.  However if any of you beat me to the lake give this a shot and let me know how you do.  Like I said it isn't 100% guaranteed to catch bass, but I have enough confidence in this plan to use it in a tournament on this lake.  So good luck and I sure hope it helps someone out there.

Until next time, Tight Lines and Take a Kid Fishing!!!

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