Lake Fork Fishing Report

For 30 years or more I’ve had fishing Lake Fork on my Bucket List.  From 6/18/23 – 6/19/23 my wife, Chris, and I did.  Here is my report.

Pros:

• 26 of the Top 50 Largemouth Bass in Texas were caught on Fork, including the Top Six. It’s still very much the Big Bass King.
• It’s a beautiful lake and big (27,264 acres), so there are many places to fish, IF you have the nerve to try to get to them. I didn’t, and instead focused on three coves close to where we were RVing and a short stretch of rocks by the dam.
• Chaney Point RV Park (where we stayed), which focuses on long-term RVers, was a very quiet park.
• The food at Seth’s Lake Fork Creek (Cajun) near Quitman and Go Fish Cafe (and lure shop) near Yantis was good. Seth’s only serves lunch and dinner.  Go Fish only serves breakfast and lunch.  There’s also an Italian joint in Yantis that we didn’t have the time to go to.

Cons:

• It’s very stumpy (think Lake Granger in the San Gabriel WMA on steroids) and has dark water. Many times, using my (bow-mounted) trolling motor I wouldn’t see a stump below the surface until we were two feet or less from it.  I lost count of how many I hit.  I also stuck my boat on top of stumps that I didn’t see several times and had to rock it off.  I bought a lane chip for my Humminbird.  Supposedly, you can follow the purple line and won’t hit stumps.  But I was smack dab in the middle of the line and still hit an underwater tree.  Consequently, the fastest that I ever went was 5 MPH (crawling, for those of you who don’t own boats).
• Because of its Big Bass King status, Fork is the target of many bass fishing tournaments. Therefore, it’s highly pressured.
• This time of the year, many fishermen start to fish offshore. Of course, they know where rocks, brush piles, trees, etc. are located.  I watched several YouTube videos before I left, but none of them gave up any secrets.
• There are no major cities anywhere near there. The closest one is Dallas – 80 miles away.  Consequently, restaurants are limited.
• Fork at its closest point is 234 miles from my house.  That’s further than the coast.
• For those with campers, there are no state, county, or USACE parks on the lake, but there are several private parks, such as Chaney Point. The problem with the private parks is their RV spots are very close together and they don’t have tables, grills, fire rings, etc. – just electricity, water, asphalt, a boat ramp, and a bathroom with showers.

We got there too late on Saturday evening to put our boat in the water, so we only fished on Sunday morning and afternoon and Monday morning.  We both landed one bass.  Chris’ was 13 1/2″.  Mine was around 12″.  We have two others on each, but they got off our hooks.  All six fish were hooked on squarebill crankbaits.  I also had a fish hit my Zara Spook topwater twice that managed to not get hooked.  We didn’t see any other fishermen catch a fish.

Final analysis: it was good to finally scratch fishing Fork off my Bucket List.  If we were to fish it a lot, I’m sure we’d eventually be more successful, but at 234 miles away that’s impractical.  We’ll probably not return, especially seeing that we do just as well or better on much closer lakes such as Decker, Travis, Austin, and Bastrop.