Ray Roberts Lake

[site admin]

Hi,

I'm Lake Ray Roberts. I live a bit north of Dallas Texas. I am 30,000 acres. The biggest bass pulled out of me has been 15lbs. It's been many years since I had a spoonplugger fish me.
What kind of reservoir am I?
How and where would you spend your time fishing me?
You can look at me in more detail here: https://webapp.navionics.com/?lang=en#b ... E%60%7DioQ

[Team9nine]

Looks like a predominantly lowland reservoir to me (Lowland 1?), with perhaps some hints of flatland to it in the upper reaches of the major creek arms. Clear water thanks to zebra mussels along with milfoil and other vegetation. Max depth near 100', but most a little shallower (50'-75'). Have to go well up the major tributaries, it appears, to get to the best water color. Problem is, that is also where the majority of the 2,000 acres of flooded timber reside. But, all the major causeways are also up in those areas, so that would be near the top of my list of areas to check out if I was there.

[waterflogger_no_more]

Looks like a lowland lake. I like the east fork of the lake best. Simply for better water color and shallower depth, I would go up the east fork until depths in the channel were no more than about 50 feet and fish from there up until it got no shallower in the deepest parts than about 30 feet. I've marked six spots I would focus on. There are others, but these seem pretty obvious places to start.

Spots 1 and 2 are humps next to the channel. No walleye are reported in this lake that I know of so the humps may not produce as they don't go all the way to the shallows, but I would check them out anyway. Spot 3 is a significant bar that reaches the channel. There's a short bar at 4 where the channel is adjacent that I would check, and also the area around 5 for the same reason.

In the deeper part of the lake there is a big bar at spot 6 that looks promising. The channel is far away but it's deep enough that it might hold a school of bass.

I would be tempted to troll along the dam down to about 50 feet, especially the east side of it where the water is deepest.
Weeds and flooded timber would factor into all this of course. I don't know if there is a distinct weedline, so only going there and fishing it would answer that question.

[Garry B]

"Have to go well up the major tributaries, it appears, to get to the best water color. Problem is, that is also where the majority of the 2,000 acres of flooded timber reside."

I have fished this lake and Team9nine observations are right on the money. This lake if full of slab crappies. Except for the spawn season, stay out of the trees and fish the standing trees along the channels.

P.S. - if you go, I recommend you use a stainless prop.

[site admin]

Thanks for the replies Harold, Brian and Garry.
I would pick one of the larger feeder arms towards the headwaters and try to just stay there.
If it has a lot of standing trees, that would indicate it was built in more recent times. I checked, and yes, it was built in the early 80's.
Texas is on my bucket list. The number of large reservoirs and BIG bass there is astonishing. I'm surprised that there are hardly any spoonpluggers (that I know of) down there fishing all of these lakes. When retirement should ever come, I'd like to spend the whole summer in Texas.
Determining the reservoir type seems to always be challenging topic. I would say it is a deep flatlander.

[jwt]

Ray Roberts was flooded in 1987; right after Joe Pool Lake. I fished RR around 1988/1989 before they had boat launches; just back down a road that ran into the lake to launch. Don't remember too much about it except the lake was not clear cut.

The Dallas Spoonpluggers had 100+ member at one time, but had dropped to a handful when I lived there.

[chadyp]

The lake is full of trees and is known as a prop killer. Last time I was on the lake it did not have clear defined boat lanes through the trees.

[CHAMP]

Determining the reservoir type seems to always be challenging topic. This is true in a lot of cases but a good structure is a good structure no matter what type res. class we put on it. The big wide dam says flatland also the arm on the left seems flatland. But the arm on the right is more along the lowland type. In either case I would try to pick best water color away from the timber. But the causeways would get a lot of my attention.

[Sonny]

I have never fished a reservoir, but would guess it is a flatland?



Sonny