Well, with our club’s December meeting happening tonight, where we will vote in the first quarter’s worth of tournaments for 2016, it’s time to release my fantasy club tournament schedule for 2016! Here are the lakes I’m hoping for and my reasoning behind each of them:
- January – Lake LBJ: For the love, can we please fish somewhere other than Bastrop and Fayette every December and January?! I love to fish power plant lakes in the winter too, but can’t we fish one power plant lake and one non-power plant lake for December and January? I’m gonna call the club out a bit on this one and say we’ve got some wimps who are apparently scared of having to actually fish winter tactics and patterns. In previous winters, I’ve tried to vote in a lake that will force guys to fish deep, but this time I’m going for a little middle ground. LBJ is a lake that you can choose to fish either shallow or deep in the winter. I know you native Texas boys are scared of anything over 15 feet deep. Maybe this will make guys a little less scared of fishing a non-power plant lake in the winter? OK, technically LBJ is a power plant lake, but we all know it rarely is in operation. Not to mention, the first TTZ Trail event of the year on January 30th is at LBJ, so this may be a good pre-fishing opportunity for that.
- February – Dunlap: This pick is based on the fact that I’m hoping it will be our slugfest tournament for the year. The glory days of Lake Austin are over… at least for the time being. Dunlap has been known for it’s lunkers in recent years, so I think it has some good potential to see some giant bags in February during the pre-spawn phase. If not giant bags, we will at least have our best shot at a truly GIANT bass. I would nominate Lady Bird Lake for this tournament, but I’ve already had that discussion with many guys in the club. I love Lady Bird, but not for the sake of a tournament. It sucks fishing a tournament only on a trolling motor all day.
- March – Stillhouse: This place doesn’t get a whole lot of love despite the fact that the fishing has improved greatly on it over the past 2-3 years. It’s still flying under the radar and has a reputation of being a “dead sea.” Since it has that reputation, let’s hit it up during one of the best bass fishing months of the year and see what it’s really capable of. I think a lot of guys will be pretty surprised.
- April – Austin: Yeah, I know I said earlier that Lake Austin is past it’s glory days. Well, it is, but despite that there are still some lunkers roaming around in there. Our best bet at catching one will be in one of the spring months. If we try to fish Austin any other time of the year, it could make for a pretty tough deal.
- May – Georgetown: May can be a pretty tough month to fish here in central Texas, however, it’s not into full on summer mode yet, so the fishing isn’t that rough just yet. Things are getting hot, most of the bass are done spawning and in a post-spawn funk, but not all of them! In my mind, that makes for a good reason to go check out a new body of water. Not an excellent time of the year to fish, but not a horrible time of the year to fish either.
- June – Buchanan: Honestly, I put this one here because I didn’t really know where else to put it. I actually love to fish Buch in the winter, but I didn’t think I could get anyone to vote for it. Generally, I like to fish grass lakes in the summer months, but I didn’t want to pack the entire summer with grass lakes. I figured we had to have at least one rock lake to fish in the summer. This could potentially be a bit of a tough tournament since most of our rock lakes fish tough in the summer, but Buch has got the lunkers in it where despite the heat, someone could really get on ’em if they got smart.
- July – Decker: I fished this lake for the first time with the club this year in 2015, and I gotta say… it’s a pretty sweet little lake. I need more excuses to fish this lake. I picked it for the summer time because it has good vegetation growth, the recreational boat traffic is relatively light, and because of the potential for catching an awesomely big bag on a FROG! In my book, you’ve gotta have a tournament on the schedule with the potential for really sacking ’em up on a frog, and this place is it!
- August – Inks: Ok, so we’ve fished Inks in August for the past two years now. This pick is purely selfish on my part. I got the big bag on this lake two years ago, and I had a shot to do it again this year, but lost some key fish. I won’t lie, I’m picking this one because I’ve got a good track record for Inks in August and I like my odds of winning this one. And again, it’s a summer month, it’s still hot, and this lake has got grass which generally makes the summer fishing a little easier.
- September – Marble Falls: Another hot summer month and another grass lake. I still haven’t been able to get the club to vote in this lake, but hopefully it’ll happen this time. Guys complain that it’s small, but heck, we have a small club! High schools have tournaments on Marble Falls all the time with more boats than we usually have in our club tournaments. They never seem to complain, and anyone I know that fishes Marble Falls with any kind of regularity says that it’s actually a pretty sweet little lake with some big bass in it. Summertime sounds like a good time to hit it to me.
- October – Belton: Slightly a selfish pick on my part again. My confidence is sky-high on Belton in October. It’s a great time of the year to fish this lake in my opinion. Not to mention the fact that fishing Belton in October benefits all of the club members who plan on participating in the annual Fishing for Freedom tournament every October. It will give you a chance to pre-fish out here in hopes of winning that new boat in Fishing for Freedom.
- November – Travis: This is typically a great month to fish Travis. The weather is cooling down and the huge population of bass that live in Travis are moving shallow to feed. A great opportunity to get out there, throw some reaction baits, and just have fun catching a ton of fish.
- December – Bastrop: As promised, I do want to fish a power plant lake in one of our winter months. I picked Bastrop over Fayette simply because it is closer to Austin. Fayette is a fun lake, too, and has potential for bigger fish in my opinion, but it’s just too far of a drive for me to enjoy fishing a club event at and spending the gas money on. And hey, you can still get a pretty darn good bag at Bastrop. Just to give you an idea, I just had the largest individual bag at our Fayette tournament there this past weekend with 17+ pounds. This past winter when we fished Bastrop, I had 17+ pounds then as well and did not have the largest individual bag. The bigger fish show up on Bastrop in the winter if you ask me.
Anyway, there’s my fantasy schedule for 2016! I was actually a little surprised at how many of my fantasy picks we voted in for our 2015 schedule, so something tells me I may not be so lucky this year and there will be some guys that don’t vote for my picks just because I nominated them. One can dream though! Ha!
Yup, I agree with most. I would, however put in Fayette in April and Austin in May. Topwater anyone?