Anglers are enjoying the first full spring of fishing at Bois d’ Arc Lake in Fannin County. A few have already found the big ones biting.
Located near Bonham, 16,600-acre Bois d’ Arc (pronounced Bo-Dark) opened for recreational boat traffic and fishing last April. It is the first major reservoir to open in Texas since O.H. Ivie near San Angelo in the early 1990s.
Fisheries experts have groomed the lake for high quality fishing from the get-go. And it shows.
Within weeks of opening the lake produced a lake record largemouth weighing 9.05 pounds for fishing guide Jason Conn of Anna. The football-shaped fish was only 20 inches long — a tell-tale sign of good genes, excellent habitat and a healthy diet.
Fisheries biologist Dan Bennett rides shotgun over the new lake for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. He predicts the lake will produce a double-digit fish this year and could threaten the state record down the road.
Bass aren’t the only fish in the lake that are fat and sassy.
Bennett says some channel cat stocked as fingerlings in 2021 have already reached the 10-pound mark. On March 10, Nick Hauk was fishing with Conn when he caught a 2.74 pound white crappie that is a pending lake record.
Conn said he spotted the fish on LiveScope while the two men were bass fishing and instructed Hauk to cast that direction. The fish pounced on a prototype Toad Thumper 3 1/2 inch paddle tail swimbait.
Bennett said he has heard several other reports of large crappie hitting spinnerbaits, Chatterbaits and other artificial baits intended to catch bass.
“It didn’t surprise me at all to hear about a crappie that size getting caught,” Bennett said. “The lake is really fertile right now and the fish are healthy because of it. Everything out there is growing like gangbusters.”
BUTLER/MATER CRACK 31.67 IN ‘CHAMPS
Robert Butler and Brian Mater weighed 31.67 pounds on five bass to take the top spot in the Bass Champs team event held March 15 in Cedar Creek. They won $35,000, including contingency bonuses.
The anglers said they caught their fish flipping Texas rigs in water ranging 3-4 feet deep. They suspect the fish were on spawning beds.
Pake South and Kyle Evans took second out of 226 teams with 28.43. They won $11,000 and also weighed in the event’s biggest bass, a 9.78 pounder South caught on a jerk bait. South said they caught their fish exclusively using LiveScope. Eight other teams weighed in more than 20 pounds.
TPWD STOCKING REPORT
TPWD’s Inland Fisheries Division recently released its 2024 freshwater fish stocking report. Not surprisingly, the numbers are pretty tall.
All told, TPWD stocked public waters with about 26 million fish including 17 different species, sub-species or hybrids. Nearly 8 million of the fish were stocked in state park waters. Sunshine bass (white bass/striped bass hybrids) accounted for the bulk of the stockings, about 8.1 million fish, followed by Lone Star Florida bass, 6.4 million.
TPWD says sport fishing is an economic cash cow for the state with an annual impact of about $14 billion. TPWD says the economic values of the state’s top ranked bass fisheries — Fork, Sam Rayburn, Toledo Bend and O.H. Ivie — ranges from $10-$37 million each year.
The striped bass fishery at Lake Texoma is even more valuable, $47 million annually. River fishing in the Hill Country (Central Texas) for species such as Guadalupe bass, white bass, rainbow trout, and Rio Grande cichlid was recently estimated at $74 million over a 16-month period, TPWD says.
