Catching fish on Lake Pinkston

Jacksonville Progress

April 08, 2008 10:04 pm

— Last week I got a chance to fish with Frank Lusk on Lake Pinkston.
Not many fishermen talk about or fish Lake Pinkston because of its size and the lack of amenities on the lake.
Lake Pinkston is remote and harder to get to but has a lot of potential. It is located 12.5 miles southwest of Center, Texas. A narrow dirt road with lots of pot holes winding through a remote countryside leads to the lake. Parking is very limited. I know this doesn’t sound very appealing, but once you arrive at the lake it will be well worth the effort. The lake has an abundance of wood cover and lots of grass to pitch a lure into.
The lake is full of stumps and fallen trees. Hydrilla is growing throughout the lake. Bait fish is abundant, and the bass grow big there.
Lusk and I picked a perfect day. A light wind and partly cloudy skies made the trip very enjoyable.
Bedding fish were our primary objective. Whenever we encountered bedding fish we mostly targeted them by pitching a white tube to the nest. Lusk was very good at finding and pointing out nests to me. Shortly after arriving I pitched a Nichols white Salty Mother tube to a nest for a few minutes before enticing a three-pound bass to strike.
Soon afterwards a big school of bass busted shad on a nearby point and we both landed a bass at the same time. One came off of a tube and one on a fluke.
Bass bedding sites were everywhere. That morning very few bass were on beds, but several bass were cruising over the grass. Lusk said, “These bass that you see out over the grass will move on to the bank later on. We can come back to these same empty beds and find bass on them. There are deeper beds that we can’t see at all now. Later on we can come back when the sun is up higher and catch some big bass on the deeper beds.”
We caught several two to three pound bass right before noon. About noontime I remember one particular fish that Lusk spotted on a nest. For about ten minutes we repeatedly pitched a white tube to the nest. You could tell that the bass was getting very agitated.
The bass would make a short circle around the bed and nose down toward the bait. Lusk then changed lures and pitched a red craw worm into the nest and the three-pound bass inhaled the lure.
About 12:30 that afternoon we moved into a shallow pocket and saw bass swimming everywhere. Lusk even caught one bass twice out of the same nest. Some of the bass were very aggressive and some would refuse to bite.
It was at this time that I discovered that some of the bedding bass would “blow up” on a gold Chug Bug.
The overcast day hampered our success of catching bedding bass. Lusk said, “Big fish bite better in bright sunshine than on overcast days.”
We eventually worked our way back to where we had begun fishing earlier that morning. Beds that were empty that morning held some nice size bass. One bass that weighed about four pounds finally bit after we aggravated it for about 15 minutes. Such is the nature of fishing for bedding bass. Some bit quickly, some after several minutes, and some would run off when our bait hit the water.
The overcast skies kept us from spotting some of the larger, deeper bedding bass. We still had a great fishing day. A few of our bass were caught on spinner baits and a Nichols red Chatter Box with a red Texas craw.
Later that afternoon we saw lots of “cruising” bass – bass that were swimming near the bank over the hydrilla. These bass will eventually be locked down on nesting sites.
Without a doubt, Lake Pinkston has a great population of black bass.
There are days when the big bass really turn on and you can catch a lot of nice bass.
Miller can be reached at gonefishing813@peoplepc.com