It's getting towards the end of February and I'm starting to see very early signs of pre-spawn activity from my friends the Lake Travis bass. Currently as of writing this I have been catching about a 50/50 mix of fish up shallow and fish out deep. Water temperatures are right around 55 degrees, but I've seen day time temps up in the coves as warm as 58 degrees. Keep in mind that this is a transition time of year and as conditions change so will the bass behavior. Warmer day time temperatures and longer days with more sunlight will equate to the lake temperature rising considerably over the next month.
I also want to take a second and thank everybody who texted or emailed me about my finish in the recent TTZ tournament on Lake Travis! We certainly didn't wind, but we put up a solid limit anchored by a 7.01 pound beast! All we needed was one more decent bass to cull one of our dinks and we'd have been there. For those who have been wondering, the majority of our fish were caught on swim baits. We did catch a couple on blade baits, Alabama rigs, and drop shots, but swimbaits produced the majority of fish and the size we were looking for. We were targeting fish that had moved up out of the creek channels into deeper water, to cover such as rock and grass. Finding areas close to deep water was the key.
The weather this past week has made things a little bit trickier as far as guiding as the winds have been pretty strong. However the rest of the week looks like it should be a little bit better and the weather should stay fairly stable. With a few days in the forecast with highs in the 80s, I would expect to see more fish starting to move up shallow maybe even moving up to make beds. There are a couple baits I would recommend you tie on in order to target these priests on fish. A medium diving crank bait, a single paddle tail swimbait on a small led head, and an Alabama rig are excellent choices. These are moving baits that will allow you to cover water quickly and fish fast. During this time of year the bass feed on a variety of forage but mainly threadfin shad and crawfish. A football jig and a Texas rigged speed crawl are also to baits that I like to have tied on when the fish want a bait presented slower.
I will do my best to post a few more regular reports as the conditions on Lake Travis change. As I mentioned earlier in this report the end of February is always a transition time, where fish move from their deep winter time spots to more shallow pre-spawn spots.
In Crappie news, the Crappie bite has actually been quite good on the upper end of Lake Travis. Just to reiterate before I get messages about this, because it never fails haha, I do not guide for Crappie. However if you are interested in targeting Crappie, I have a guide who I can set you up with on Lake Buchanan. Small jig heads tipped with small live minnows have been the most productive, however I have been able to catch quite a few using small chartreuse and blue Crappie jigs. If you have not read it yet, go to the articles section of my website. There is an in-depth article about how to target and locate crappie on Lake Travis. There is also a YouTube video up on my channel that discusses just this, I guarantee it will help you a ton if you were unfamiliar with Crappie fishing on lake Travis
As always, thank you for reading my reports! I hope they help you catch more fish, please consider sharing a link to this report on your social media. It really is the best thing you can do to help me promote my guide service and continue to do what I love doing... fishing! If you or someone you know is looking for a Lake Travis fishing guide please send them my way.
Tight Lines y'all!
-Tyler