What's the best largemouth bass lake in Texas? Spencer Dumont,TPWD, in the fall of 2012 conducted electrofishing on 62 different reservoirs. His goal was to determine what's the best bass Lake in Texas. The result was a tie between Walter E. Long and Sam Rayburn. Walter E. Long Lake is located just east of Austin.
Top ten lakes for keeper bass and top 10 lakes for quality bass results were factored into the final choice for the best bass lake. For keeper bass, Rayburn came in third with 35.5/hour; top lake was Bastrop with 64/hour. Bastrop and Raven tied for first with 10/hour for quality bass.
Dumont cautioned that anglers should not expect to catch bass in the same numbers as the electrofishing boats.
"Electrofishing gives an indication of how abundant bass of different sizes are in a reservoir," he said. "Also, electrofishing does not generally collect very large fish. There may well be larger fish in a reservoir than shows up in electrofishing surveys. Falcon would be a good example. We know that lake has lots of big bass, but it's very hard to collect them with electrofishing."
If your lake is missing from the list, it may be due to the fact that not every reservoir is sampled every year. "Lake Fork did not show up on any of lists. Also sometimes you don't get a good sample."
Dumont also pointed out that reservoirs are not all the same. "Electrofishing rates are not always directly comparable from lake to lake, so we typically monitor trends in the same lake from year to year."
