Lip Rippin' on Lake Falcon - Kayak Fishing Adventures on Big Water’s Edge

fishinkid2010 · 04-23-2011, 08:40 PM

It aint kayak fishing, but I though y'all would enjoy this report!

DAY 1
About the only benefit of going to a Baptist school is that they give us a long four day weekend for Easter. So naturally, what do you think we would do?... yep, we went bass fishing. It wasn’t just your usual day of bass fishing, it was fishing on probably the best bass lake in North America for large mouth bass. This is debatable, but seeing a double digit fish pulled out of this lake is nothing uncommon whatsoever. Which lake is this?... Lake Falcon on the Texas/ Mexico border! We had epic fishing for the two days we fished, and according to everyone we spoke with the fishing is even better on the Mexico side if you are willing to take the risk. Things really are not bad, but there is always that little bit of risk.

We started off the day by launching out of Velino which in in Zapata, TX and heading a mile or two from the launch and targeting deep rock piles and humps. We were able to find the direction the rock piles extended with the Humminbird’s side scan, and then throwing a marker buoy on the location. We fished this way for a while with meager results. We then noticed some fish breaking the surface closer in to the submerged trees in shallower water. We headed shallower and started throwing flukes and other shallow running baits. The real producer was a Skinny Bear tilapia colored fluke, rigged with a weighted EWG hook and on a Carolina rig produced some nice results. We also managed to get a few fish off of a top-water popper. The other bait that worked very well in this area was a Mann’s Baby T-Minus shallow diving crankbait. The shad pattern worked the best for obvious reasons: the shad on Falcon are spawning and the bass are really keying in on the shad pattern baits. We even had a nice gar hit the crankbait that morning.
After heading to the north side of the bridge out of Velino we went the opposite way and headed closer to Mexico on the south side of the bridge. We ended up catching a few fish off of points with submerged trees near by. For those of you unfamiliar with Falcon… there is brush everywhere along the edge of the lake. Producers in the morning on that side of the lake were Carolina rigged Mann’s senkos, Stanley Sidewinders, and baby brush hogs. Fishing curl tail Culprit worms and fat Roboworms on a shakey head also picked up a fish or two, but nothing big. We made sure to slather all of our baits in Unibutter, I definitely noticed an increase in hookups, fewer fish were picking up the bait and dropping it.
After that we headed in due to the heat (it was in the mid to high 90’s) and took a nap until the afternoon bite. When the sun came out from behind the clouds it was a killer on the eyes, all of us had our Costa del Mar sunglasses on which made things very comfortable. Also, if you ever plan to fish this lake in the summer, bring lots of sunscreen, you’ll thank me! (don’t ask how I know)

For the afternoon we bite drove a ways to a spot called El Tigre that was recommended to us by James the owner of Lake Falcon Tackle. He also recommended that we throw Flukes, both the regular size and the Magnum flukes… Let’s just say that we owe him one for the advice!
We headed across the cove and found some points with trees and deep water near by. The other thing that we keyed in on was the white Cattle Egrets sitting on the bank. I assure you, them Egrets ain’t sitting around talking about Obama’s birth certificate with one another, they’re out there looking for shad. We flipped and pitched around the trees for a while with decent results, then finally we stopped at one point that was about 7’ deep with 22’ of water within casting distance. After we figured this place out, all hell broke loose. We initially started off with drop shotting smaller Skinnybear fukes, then we moved onto Carolina rigs. This produced a ton of bites, but I was after Big Hoss, not his grand kids. Shad shaped baits were the ticket, we put on flukes in order to imitate the shad and we started killing them. I kid you not, I bent several hooks out on some nicer models! I fish pretty heavy tackle, and with the custom Rainshadow RX8+ rods we have, we’ve got a lot of backbone in the set ups we fish. After that I only tied on Owner hooks so that I could better my chances of landing a swamp donkey. I actually had one come off the hook that jumped about 20 feet from the boat, that we were all in agreement was at least a 6… seeing that happened will make you tie on good quality hooks in a hurry.
We ended that evening with two 8+ pound fish, a 6, two 5’s, a bunch of fours, and countless 3 pound fish and smaller. Bigger tackle was the key here, we actually had to re-spool one of our Curados to accommodate the size of fish we were catching. With all the submerged trees out there it’s important to use a good abrasion resistant line. We spooled all of our reels with McCoy 15 and 17 pound test Fluorocarbon. We used 1 oz sinkers, McCoy 20# flouro for leaders, and Owner 4/0 and 5/0 EWG hooks… with these fish there is no such thing as too big or too strong of a hook. Another thing I was very impressed with was some of the rods we have built on North Fork Composite blanks, I’ve been using them for a little while now, but to be honest, we have not hooked any fish on them yet that were able to put them to the test. These blanks have a ton of backbone, but are still very sensitive; I could easily tell when I was running though trees and rocks, as opposed to a light biting bucket mouth. (it can be tough to tell what you are pulling though at times with a 1 oz bullet weight)
Enjoy the pictures!

Here is the road to get to El Tigre

DAY 2
For day two we woke up a little earlier in order to get to El Tigre island before sunrise. To get to this launch ramp you have to take a pretty long dirt road to get to the lake. With the results we had had the evening before, we opted to head to the same spot… Good call! We got to the spot and were greeted by bass breaking and feeding on shad on the surface. You know what that means!... top water baits! We nailed a few little guys on pop-r’s. We then proceeded to the tried and true Carolina rig, for a little over an hour it was a wide open bite, we were to the point where we were giving each other shit for not setting the hook like Bill Dance simply because it was so easy to predict a bite. You could see the fish running with your line, and just lay into them with all your might. It was some down right lip rippin fun! We also threw Mann’s Stone jigs in deeper water, and Stanley finesse jigs around the shallower trees. Most of these fish were under 3 pounds. After that little feeding frenzy we had a lul of about a half hour where we only caught a few fish… I think it might have been because they knew the big fish were on their way! We were throwing big lizards, brush hogs, and flukes as far as we could and retrieving them at a slow speed. We busted some drags and tackle this way! We caught another 8 pounds, some 5’s, a few 4’s and tons of 3 pound fish… these Falcon bass fight better than any other fish I’ve had the pleasure of catching! I personally ended up with over 25 fish just for my efforts from sunrise till around noon. Between the three of us we caught around 40 fish. We stayed around this deep point jaw jerkin some sizable bass for all of our morning. Once the bite finally died off due to the heat and high sun we called it a day.
We opted to score some brownie points and head back home that afternoon due to Easter being right around the corner, rather than staying for the afternoon bite and another day of fishing. But I assure you, those fish are probably feeding like crazy right now!
Thanks for reading the report, I hope you enjoy it, since it was definitely some of the best bass fishing I have ever seen.

I would also really like to thank our sponsors, with gas prices being a killer it helps not having to worry quite so much about tackle.

Skinny Bear Tackle
Mann’s Bait Co,
Culprit Bait
Roboworm
Stanley Jigs
Batson Enterprises
North Fork Composites
Bullard Int.
Costa Del Mar Sunglasses
Ardent Reels
McCoy Premium Fishing Line
Seaguar Fluorocarbon
Earthsports.com
Bass King clothing
Hodges Capital Management
Diamond Pacific Construction

Lets_Fish · 04-23-2011, 09:01 PM

Epic large mouth fishing there!

Can you slip a few of those monsters into some of the local lakes here?

Amish Ed · 04-23-2011, 10:52 PM

JEALOUS!

ODOGFISH · 04-24-2011, 10:32 AM

nice bucket mouths you caught there , wasn't that lake in the news lately , seems like a nice fishing hole

fishinfreak · 04-24-2011, 12:45 PM

oh my tyler...

FARRIER · 04-24-2011, 03:08 PM

Nice bags there. Not bad at all.

04-23-2011, 08:40 PM	#1
fishinkid2010 Senior Member Join Date: Nov 2008 Location: La Mesa Posts: 386	Lip Rippin' on Lake Falcon It aint kayak fishing, but I though y'all would enjoy this report! DAY 1 About the only benefit of going to a Baptist school is that they give us a long four day weekend for Easter. So naturally, what do you think we would do?... yep, we went bass fishing. It wasn’t just your usual day of bass fishing, it was fishing on probably the best bass lake in North America for large mouth bass. This is debatable, but seeing a double digit fish pulled out of this lake is nothing uncommon whatsoever. Which lake is this?... Lake Falcon on the Texas/ Mexico border! We had epic fishing for the two days we fished, and according to everyone we spoke with the fishing is even better on the Mexico side if you are willing to take the risk. Things really are not bad, but there is always that little bit of risk. We started off the day by launching out of Velino which in in Zapata, TX and heading a mile or two from the launch and targeting deep rock piles and humps. We were able to find the direction the rock piles extended with the Humminbird’s side scan, and then throwing a marker buoy on the location. We fished this way for a while with meager results. We then noticed some fish breaking the surface closer in to the submerged trees in shallower water. We headed shallower and started throwing flukes and other shallow running baits. The real producer was a Skinny Bear tilapia colored fluke, rigged with a weighted EWG hook and on a Carolina rig produced some nice results. We also managed to get a few fish off of a top-water popper. The other bait that worked very well in this area was a Mann’s Baby T-Minus shallow diving crankbait. The shad pattern worked the best for obvious reasons: the shad on Falcon are spawning and the bass are really keying in on the shad pattern baits. We even had a nice gar hit the crankbait that morning. After heading to the north side of the bridge out of Velino we went the opposite way and headed closer to Mexico on the south side of the bridge. We ended up catching a few fish off of points with submerged trees near by. For those of you unfamiliar with Falcon… there is brush everywhere along the edge of the lake. Producers in the morning on that side of the lake were Carolina rigged Mann’s senkos, Stanley Sidewinders, and baby brush hogs. Fishing curl tail Culprit worms and fat Roboworms on a shakey head also picked up a fish or two, but nothing big. We made sure to slather all of our baits in Unibutter, I definitely noticed an increase in hookups, fewer fish were picking up the bait and dropping it. After that we headed in due to the heat (it was in the mid to high 90’s) and took a nap until the afternoon bite. When the sun came out from behind the clouds it was a killer on the eyes, all of us had our Costa del Mar sunglasses on which made things very comfortable. Also, if you ever plan to fish this lake in the summer, bring lots of sunscreen, you’ll thank me! (don’t ask how I know) For the afternoon we bite drove a ways to a spot called El Tigre that was recommended to us by James the owner of Lake Falcon Tackle. He also recommended that we throw Flukes, both the regular size and the Magnum flukes… Let’s just say that we owe him one for the advice! We headed across the cove and found some points with trees and deep water near by. The other thing that we keyed in on was the white Cattle Egrets sitting on the bank. I assure you, them Egrets ain’t sitting around talking about Obama’s birth certificate with one another, they’re out there looking for shad. We flipped and pitched around the trees for a while with decent results, then finally we stopped at one point that was about 7’ deep with 22’ of water within casting distance. After we figured this place out, all hell broke loose. We initially started off with drop shotting smaller Skinnybear fukes, then we moved onto Carolina rigs. This produced a ton of bites, but I was after Big Hoss, not his grand kids. Shad shaped baits were the ticket, we put on flukes in order to imitate the shad and we started killing them. I kid you not, I bent several hooks out on some nicer models! I fish pretty heavy tackle, and with the custom Rainshadow RX8+ rods we have, we’ve got a lot of backbone in the set ups we fish. After that I only tied on Owner hooks so that I could better my chances of landing a swamp donkey. I actually had one come off the hook that jumped about 20 feet from the boat, that we were all in agreement was at least a 6… seeing that happened will make you tie on good quality hooks in a hurry. We ended that evening with two 8+ pound fish, a 6, two 5’s, a bunch of fours, and countless 3 pound fish and smaller. Bigger tackle was the key here, we actually had to re-spool one of our Curados to accommodate the size of fish we were catching. With all the submerged trees out there it’s important to use a good abrasion resistant line. We spooled all of our reels with McCoy 15 and 17 pound test Fluorocarbon. We used 1 oz sinkers, McCoy 20# flouro for leaders, and Owner 4/0 and 5/0 EWG hooks… with these fish there is no such thing as too big or too strong of a hook. Another thing I was very impressed with was some of the rods we have built on North Fork Composite blanks, I’ve been using them for a little while now, but to be honest, we have not hooked any fish on them yet that were able to put them to the test. These blanks have a ton of backbone, but are still very sensitive; I could easily tell when I was running though trees and rocks, as opposed to a light biting bucket mouth. (it can be tough to tell what you are pulling though at times with a 1 oz bullet weight) Enjoy the pictures! Here is the road to get to El Tigre DAY 2 For day two we woke up a little earlier in order to get to El Tigre island before sunrise. To get to this launch ramp you have to take a pretty long dirt road to get to the lake. With the results we had had the evening before, we opted to head to the same spot… Good call! We got to the spot and were greeted by bass breaking and feeding on shad on the surface. You know what that means!... top water baits! We nailed a few little guys on pop-r’s. We then proceeded to the tried and true Carolina rig, for a little over an hour it was a wide open bite, we were to the point where we were giving each other shit for not setting the hook like Bill Dance simply because it was so easy to predict a bite. You could see the fish running with your line, and just lay into them with all your might. It was some down right lip rippin fun! We also threw Mann’s Stone jigs in deeper water, and Stanley finesse jigs around the shallower trees. Most of these fish were under 3 pounds. After that little feeding frenzy we had a lul of about a half hour where we only caught a few fish… I think it might have been because they knew the big fish were on their way! We were throwing big lizards, brush hogs, and flukes as far as we could and retrieving them at a slow speed. We busted some drags and tackle this way! We caught another 8 pounds, some 5’s, a few 4’s and tons of 3 pound fish… these Falcon bass fight better than any other fish I’ve had the pleasure of catching! I personally ended up with over 25 fish just for my efforts from sunrise till around noon. Between the three of us we caught around 40 fish. We stayed around this deep point jaw jerkin some sizable bass for all of our morning. Once the bite finally died off due to the heat and high sun we called it a day. We opted to score some brownie points and head back home that afternoon due to Easter being right around the corner, rather than staying for the afternoon bite and another day of fishing. But I assure you, those fish are probably feeding like crazy right now! Thanks for reading the report, I hope you enjoy it, since it was definitely some of the best bass fishing I have ever seen. I would also really like to thank our sponsors, with gas prices being a killer it helps not having to worry quite so much about tackle. Skinny Bear Tackle Mann’s Bait Co, Culprit Bait Roboworm Stanley Jigs Batson Enterprises North Fork Composites Bullard Int. Costa Del Mar Sunglasses Ardent Reels McCoy Premium Fishing Line Seaguar Fluorocarbon Earthsports.com Bass King clothing Hodges Capital Management Diamond Pacific Construction __________________ Need a custom rod wrapped? PM me! http://s686.photobucket.com/albums/vv222/fishinkid2010/Sample%20Rod%20Wrapping/?albumview=slideshow

04-23-2011, 10:52 PM	#3
Amish Ed Senior Member Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Grants Pass, OR Posts: 1,906	JEALOUS! __________________ Amish Ed You can't catch it again if it's dead!

04-24-2011, 10:32 AM	#4
ODOGFISH Member Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: HAVANA , CUBA Posts: 64	nice bucket mouths you caught there , wasn't that lake in the news lately , seems like a nice fishing hole __________________ Don't want to hear about it Every single one's got a story to tell Everyone knows about it Oscar

04-24-2011, 03:08 PM	#6
FARRIER Senior Member Join Date: Sep 2009 Location: Cmont [] Posts: 314	Nice bags there. Not bad at all. __________________ "It depends on what the meaning of the words 'is' is." –Bill Clinton

04-23-2011, 09:01 PM	#2
Lets_Fish Senior Member Join Date: Oct 2009 Location: Wildomar, CA. Posts: 294	Epic large mouth fishing there! Can you slip a few of those monsters into some of the local lakes here?

04-24-2011, 12:45 PM	#5
fishinfreak Member Join Date: Dec 2006 Posts: 46	oh my tyler...