New place

[unclefish]

I'm bored as heck with this Covid "quarantine" so I thought I would do another follow along thread with my new place.

The new place is near Waco and it's all about the water. 60 acres total....with an old gravel pit that has ~15 acres of water. Since it has about 20 different canals it's got 3 miles of shoreline to fish.

I've always wanted my own bass lake and this one has great potential for what we want to do. It's fairly deep... 18 feet in a couple places....but it also has shallow areas for spawning. The water is extremely clear with 8-10 feet visibility with lots of gravel and small rocks on the bottom. It has at least 25 different humps and points with the way they dug out the pit and willow trees in between the canals. It's got some big open water areas as well.



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[Carpe_diem]

This is me, drooling...congrats on the new place!!

[unclefish]

It has a nice gravel boat ramp and I can launch my bass boat with no issues.

It had a severe over population of bass when we bought it but we have been on a culling mission to take out as many as we can. Since last April we have taken out 560 bass. Biggest is 5 pounds or so with most 1-2 pounds. We have had several 100 fish days as they were very poor and would eat anything you threw at them.

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[unclefish]

Winter time pic of the canals and my little beaver friend's work. I'm ok with the beaver doing his thing as he has built some amazing fish habitat.

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[unclefish]

It had quite a few ducks in the winter....mostly all ringnecks....but I wasn't that mad at them this year and didn't hunt them. Several times we would flush off 200 ringnecks on our way in the gate to fish.

I did install 2 wood duck boxes hoping to get them established around there.

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[unclefish]

Wood duck boxes

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[DUKFVR]

Fabulous place Steve!! Especially with ducks!! Thanks for the thread. I was thinking of you the other day when I came through Waco. Getting ready to put our place up for sale. gonna see what else we can find. LOL!

[unclefish]

Stocking - after taking out all those bass we put in 25K golden shiners. It has a great crawfish population...almost every bass we catch has crawfish antennas sticking out of their throat.

It has bluegill and but the bass took a heavy toll on them last year. We plan on adding threadfin shad this spring and get them firmly established.


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[unclefish]

Had a new road put in and enlarged the boat ramp a bit. Electric gate is being installed as I type.

Now the barndo construction has started with dirt work underway.

It will be a weekend place for us and possibly a VRBO rental... 2 bed - 2 bath with a 30' x 25' shop. Already regretting not making the shop bigger but that is what's in our budget.

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[unclefish]

Originally Posted by DUKFVR

Fabulous place Steve!! Especially with ducks!! Thanks for the thread. I was thinking of you the other day when I came through Waco. Getting ready to put our place up for sale. gonna see what else we can find. LOL!

Thanks David. PM sent.

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[elgato]

Your place looks fantastic. How exciting!!! And very good to have you posting cool stuff again.

[unclefish]

I forgot to mention that my buddy Chance Love help me get this place and did a great job with negotiations and contract process.

I miss you Chance.

[Chew]

Wow. Heaven on earth right there. Congrats!

[unclefish]

Originally Posted by elgato

Your place looks fantastic. How exciting!!! And very good to have you posting cool stuff again.

Thanks Rusty...appreciate that.

[DUKFVR]

Originally Posted by unclefish

I forgot to mention that my buddy Chance Love help me get this place and did a great job with negotiations and contract process.

I miss you Chance.

LOL! I'm getting ready to put Chance to work. LOL!

[jerp]

Great looking place! You know, I used to dream about owning a large property to hunt on. As I have gotten older I now think I would prefer much less acreage but with lake on it. I never get tired of being on/around the water.

[bowhunterhelm]

Wow, super cool place!

[unclefish]

I did put out a feeder last year and was pleasantly surprised that it had a few deer.

The area is pretty open so I didn't expect much. But then this dude showed up.

He was very sporadic when he showed up and would almost always at night. Only had one daylight showing in 2 months I had the camera out.

Never even tried to hunt him.



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[Big Lee]

Amazing piece of heaven. Looks like a dream come true.

[BCBHunter712]

Wow.... awesome looking place.

[Heath]

That place kicks ***!

Just needs several Texas Hunter Fish Feeders on the water!

[CoolArrow]

Awesome. Congrats

[deerwatcher51]

Awesome place, enjoy!

[unclefish]

Thank you guys...I appreciate it very much. The family has been enjoying it alot. Especially on holiday weekends when the lakes are nuts.

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[unclefish]

My son is a big kayak fisherman and since all the canals interconnect it's a great kayak lake.

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[Hotrodd]

That’s AWESOME! CONGRATULATIONS!

[elgato]

Your fishing hole is stuff of dreams. Rarely say such, but I'm a tad jealous

[1longshot]

All I can say is wow!!!!

[Puncher51]

Awesome place! Can’t wait to follow along!

[LivinADream]

This is awesome.

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[dhall]

Your going to eat bass?

[unclefish]

With the unique nature of the lake with crystal clear deep water and a gravel/rock bottom we decided to not go the traditional largemouth bass route for stocking.

We wanted something very unique so after talking with several fisheries biologists we decided to stock smallmouth bass.

The problem is smallmouth and largemouth don't mix well in small lakes. The LMBs are much more prolific and prevent the SMBs spawn from being successful. Eventually the LMBs take over and in a few years the SMBs will become less and less.

So our solution will be to have a SMB brood pond on site to help supplement them and cull every LMB that we catch.

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[unclefish]

Finding a source for SMB within 500 miles was not easy. I finally found a good source and had them trucked here in Dec.

It was a good day to see them finally arrive after 8 months of waiting for them to get big enough!

We ended up stocking 650 5-7inch fish and 70 10-11inch fish. We had zero loss during transport. I'm sure we lost quite a few to the LMB that are left...but we tried to mitigate this by stocking another 18K shiners a few hours before the SMB arrived.





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[unclefish]

Our goal is to grow record class smallmouth here in a private fishery in TX. That means pouring the food to them and culling LMBs.

We were wondering how long it would take to catch one and were thrilled when the first one chomped a craw worm.


We've started catching a few every trip out.




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[steve morton]

Nice.

[unclefish]

The smart thing to do would have been to do an electro-survey too see how many LMB's we had left....but no-one ever accused me of being smart.

Also I'm cheap when it comes to things like that. I would rather spend that money on forage fish, building a brood pond, and have fun catching and eating them rather than watch the LMB's come floating up shocked to a net.

We catch fewer and fewer LMB every trip out so we think we are making a decent dent in them. But with the spawn coming up they will just resupply.

[bowhuntercoach]

That place is awesome! I grew up in Riesel....what direction are you from Waco. Love fishing those old gravel pits!

[unclefish]

Originally Posted by dhall

Your going to eat bass?

Absolutely delicious!

[unclefish]

Originally Posted by bowhuntercoach

That place is awesome! I grew up in Riesel....what direction are you from Waco. Love fishing those old gravel pits!

SE of town way down 434.

[1longshot]

Have you caught any crappie in your ponds? Just wondering if they would do well in them.

[unclefish]

Originally Posted by jerp

Great looking place! You know, I used to dream about owning a large property to hunt on. As I have gotten older I now think I would prefer much less acreage but with lake on it. I never get tired of being on/around the water.

Jerp I hit 50 this year have the exact same sentiments!

[unclefish]

Originally Posted by 1longshot

Have you caught any crappie in your ponds? Just wondering if they would do well in them.

No crappie and I'm thankful for that. I'm sure they would do extremely well and be prolific. We are putting all our resources into growing big smallmouth so we don't want anything else to distract us from that.

Since SMB's obviously have a smaller mouth then LMB the food they eat is different than LMBs. Bluegill get too big for SMB to eat pretty quickly so that's why we stocked golden shiners and will stock threadfins here shortly. SMB prefer soft-finned fish to eat and of course they love crawfish.

[Acameron52]

Man that’s cool!!

[DUKFVR]

That's interesting about the stocking of smallmouths Steve. Never would have thought of that. Any certain reason,other than the water being like it is? SM fight better ??
Good luck on it all. I know you can do it,because we all watched you develop your last place with plots. You taught us all a lot about doing food plots & we Thank You!

[unclefish]

Originally Posted by DUKFVR

That's interesting about the stocking of smallmouths Steve. Never would have thought of that. Any certain reason,other than the water being like it is? SM fight better ??
Good luck on it all. I know you can do it,because we all watched you develop your last place with plots. You taught us all a lot about doing food plots & we Thank You!

David - I really just wanted to do something different than just have LMBs in it. My son really talked me into the smallmouth because its such a unique place that's perfect for them. They do fight better the LMB's in my opinion but I haven't caught a ton of them.

So far they are fat and putting on some weight. We did have some water turkeys fly in there in January so we aren't sure how many we lost to them....but we think we are in good shape. We did notice some fish with scars on them from the birds.

I'm hoping the biggest stockers will be 15 inches by this fall and have some 20 inchers by the fall of 2022. That would be a 4.5 - 5 lb fish. The small stockers should be 9-10 inches by this fall and are a year behind the big ones.

[bgleaton]

I used to fish a bunch of gravel pits in and around Waco while going to college. We used to catch some really big fish as those gravel pits offer great terrain for bass. They also provided excellent dove and duck hunting. We would limit out on both every single hunt.

[BrandonA]

Man that looks like a small piece of heaven

[SFZack]

I think this is what heaven looks like.

[St59]

Congrats on the new place! Love the idea of stocking small mouths

[BW96]

Originally Posted by unclefish

It has a nice gravel boat ramp and I can launch my bass boat with no issues.

It had a severe over population of bass when we bought it but we have been on a culling mission to take out as many as we can. Since last April we have taken out 560 bass. Biggest is 5 pounds or so with most 1-2 pounds. We have had several 100 fish days as they were very poor and would eat anything you threw at them.

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Is that "the fish whisperer"? I follow a guy on Instagram that has a heck of a managed pond. If it's not, they sure look a lot alike.

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