Lake Amistad NRA, Box Canyon

What an adventurous day; we fished, we explored, we followed the map locating interesting points, and we visited old places.  We started the day fishing a nice little cove teeming with Bass, Bluegill, and Carp.  Cody landed four bass and two bluegill in about 10 minutes.  We made another pass and caught a couple more bass.  Then, we motored to another cove which was crystal clear 14 feet deep.  We watched the fish reacting to our flies and began to call which one we would catch to make that catch count.  Cody ate and I fished, but the wind kept wreeking havoc with the boat alignment, so I decided to eat.  Well, just like Thursday, first cast, Cody catches a 2 lb. bass.  Cody decided I needed to eat more often.  Knowing the lake so well, Cody took us to a nice little cove that was stocked with some fat Bluegill, who out-weighed the bass!  With CodyBuggers tied on our lines, it was Fish On! until we decided to stop fishing. 

The wind would not cooperate, so we decided to cool off by motoring to some unique sites.  Lake Amistad's development began in 1968.  According to the initial reports presented to Congress, Mexico stated that they owned all the land that would become the Mexican shoreline.  I don't think that was necessarily true due to the evidence of towns and buildings which existed at the time of Amistad's construction and which are still present today--underwater.  We wandered over to Mexican waters to view the Catholic church, whose steeple just nudges above the waterline.  Closer to the present-day shoreline, the map delineates many buried but existing structures.  However, we did not have a Mexican waters pass, nor did we feel like having to go through US Customs once we returned to shore, so we didn't snorkel the area. 

Even though the winds picked up and created white capping, we boated northward looking for the Good Enough Springs site, which we found marked with a boat tie-off buoy, but the springs exist 130 feet below.  Cody then moved on to an area where they used to camp when he was young.  Being the trendsetters Nonna and Pa Bell are, we saw four families camping in the same spot with their boats parked on shore!  Cody fished the area for old-times sake.  Cody, the supreme gadget guy, marked buoys 15, 16, and 21 on his GPS before we headed back.

Trying to escape the high winds and spotting a great-looking cove, we headed in to what turned out to be some of the best fishing.  We studied the cove on the map, and since it looked like an anchor and had no name, we dubbed it Anchor Cove, and boy did it produce bass!  We tossed CodyBuggers and Creek Crawlers on 300 grain sink line, and we could set the hook just as soon as we saw the flash.  We must have pulled 10 bass out of that hole alone.

With much calmer waters we began heading back to the boat ramp, but we decided to fish the cove where Cody hammered the fish during last year's trip.  It proved fruitful again.  Cody fished a popper that the fished loved, and I fished a pale Creek Crawler, which the fish loved.  Aching, tired, and fast losing sunlight, we left the cove and made the short trip to the boat ramp.  It was a fine day at sea, regardless of the high temperatures.  Tomorrow is fisherman's choice (we'll study the map and look for the "hot spots" on paper).