Fishing for bass on a small Texas lake brings back great memories of past days | Leggett

MULDOON — My friend Maurice Estlinbaum sat, boat tied to a dead tree, casting into a bathroom-sized spot along the outside edge of a line of aquatic vegetation in a small lake on land owned by his neighbor in this small community on the outskirts of La Grange.

For more than an hour, I don’t think either of us was able to retrieve the plastic lizards and creature baits we threw without getting a strike and catching or hooking a bass. Most were in the 1½-pound to 3-pound range, but every once in a while we’d latch on to a fish that would weigh as much as 6 or 7 pounds.

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It was the ultimate adventure in small lake fishing, much like the times I fished in my childhood with my brothers and father and grandfather in East Texas. We were able to switch around to different lakes and properties owned by Maurice’s friends and still catch about as many fish as one person could stand.

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One morning on a rather large lake on property owned by a neighbor, the two of us caught and released more than 100 bass on top water plugs, spinner baits, worms and lizards.

All through turkey season, Maurice had harangued me about coming down to visit him on the ranch he’d bought several years before just on the outskirts of the Muldoon community. We used to fish together in Galveston Bay, always wading for speckled trout, and Maurice is legendary for his ability to find and catch trout. He’s been doing that for nearly 50 years.

A great start on a day walking the lake

We met in 1981 during a trip arranged by our mutual friend Charlie Paradoski, shortly after Maurice had retired and began fishing full time. Not guiding, just fishing, from an old yellow Lamar that he still uses. He just changes out the engine every few years. I knew if he was willing to pass up time fishing for speckled trout, then the bass fishing must be truly remarkable. And it was!

I caught a fish on the first cast I made the first afternoon we fished, which was following a huge rainfall event that had left the lakes off color and the creeks running bank full.

Obviously, if you’re catching bass at rates such as these, you’re fishing lakes that probably are holding far too many fish. However, the lakes have been around for many, many years and are still producing large fish, so the adult bass are getting enough to eat in the form of bass fry and fingerlings and the occasional bluegill. The fish are healthy and fat and not showing signs of not having enough to eat.

One of his friends has 16 lakes on his place, from swimming hole size to more than 100 acres. One of those lakes produced a bass over 15 pounds a few years ago. The largest I caught was between 6 and 7 pounds, so I’m planning my next trip right now.

The times have changed, but the fishing's the same

We walked the banks of several lakes, which carried me back to my childhood in Panola County. We would climb a fence to reach the lakes (most of which we had permission to fish) and throw spinner baits such as H&Hs to catch the fish.

It was fun and productive fishing, especially when a friend and I could sneak onto the golf course and fish at night. I’m not recommending poaching like that since the worst that would happen to us then was maybe getting yelled at and run off by the landowner. Now things like that can be felonies, and people don’t have as casual an attitude about snot-nosed kids sneaking in to fish their lakes.

But you didn’t need a fancy boat to fish, just a kind of strong belief that those things brushing against your legs aren’t snakes or snapping turtles or alligators and that the next cast could be the big one.

Maurice knew where to go to catch fish walking the banks of the lakes, and I used my instincts honed over years of fishing like that to find my own. I caught two fish around 5 pounds the first afternoon we fished. I saw Maurice hook and land maybe 50 bass on a tiny white lure he called a jig. I explained that in freshwater it was called a “swim bait.”

It was the only time I could gain a little advantage over him, but it felt pretty good. If I could have had a moderate-sized water snake bang into his leg as he walked, that would have felt even better.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Outdoors: Fishing for bass in a small Texas lake with an old friend