Tex-Mex Big Bassin’
Lake Falcon Style (continued)
About
Dan cont'd: Dan also fishes some
semi-pro circuits including Everstart and BFL. 2004 produced two Top 5 finishes
in Texas Tournament Trail events - including a Third Place finish in the
Championship. In 2007 he fished the Texas Stren Division and finished 7th for
the year with one Top 10 and an 11th place finish. This included a 2nd place
finish with 2 records broken on nearby Lake Amistad. In 2007 he fished the Texas
Tournament Trail and finished 18th and had one Top 10 finish. This 7th place
finish provided him with a berth in the 2008 FLW Tour - and led to finishing 5th
for FLW Rookie of the Year. Though he qualified for the 2009 FLW Tour, Dan has
decided to dedicate his time to guiding on Falcon Lake and fishing the 2009
Stren Texas Division.
...and there are a lot of trees to
pitch into
Going fishing:
I fished with Dan on Falcon for a full day on February 13th, and
unfortunately the weather conditions were less than ideal. Our hopes for a
bright sunny warm day were dashed the minute I arrived at the launch ramp and
was greeted with cloudy skies, cold temperatures and wind chill. Dan was still
confident however but expressed early we might need to work hard to coax the
fish to bite on this particular day.
Dan starts getting fish with Zoom
Mag Lizards
As we left the ramp we
made a bee line straight for the Mexico side of the lake, and on the way Dan
made a prediction. “This lake is something else, it isn’t a good day unless we
catch 25 fish and one of them is probably going to be a seven plus pounder,” Dan
described. I was feeling pretty confident with a bold statement like that.
The morning is filled with healthy
3lbrs but we want bigger
I’ve fished El Salto a
number of times and the structure and cover at Falcon immediately reminded me of
Salto, only the submerged trees and brush did seem a lot more “snaggy” here. We
started out working the submerged treetops, and there were plenty of them to
flip and pitch into, so many that an angler can spend an entire day just working
a single cove and still not hit every tree. We started pitching Zoom lizards and
brush hogs into the top of these trees and when Dan saw me twitching my plastics
in the trees he immediately motioned for me to stop.
A fish camp on the Mexico side of
the lake
“These bass are a little
different, they don’t like a whole lot of action,” Dan said. “In most cases at
this time of the year you just want to try and keep your lure as still as
possible in the zone, move it only when you need to pull through structure.” Dan
was keeping his lure completely still while keeping his fingers pinched on the
line in front of his reel. It all felt really good to me down there and I must
have set on tree branches three times before finally landing a fish.
The structure feels great and I
set into plenty of "wood-fish"
Dan was pulling a lot of
fish from the treetops and all were healthy 3lb fish but we couldn’t seem to
find any of the big girls. After working the treetops all morning the cloud
cover still hadn’t broken up much at all and the winds were also starting to
pick up. “On any other lake these conditions would be big fish weather,” Dan
said. “This heavy cloud cover is really not good for Falcon, the fish here like
bluebird skies, they like the sun and they want warm water.”
A fish from the treetops
