Stock Tanks

There are more than a million impoundments in Texas smaller than ten acres. Almost all of them hold bass. Almost none of them are fished more than a few times a year, and a good many are not fished at all.

This is the most overlooked fishing in the state. It requires no boat, no guide, and no early start. It requires a landowner's permission, which is a social skill rather than an angling one, and a willingness to fish water that nobody writes about.

Why the fishing is good

A small pond with an unfished bass population develops a size structure that reservoir fishing does not. Without pressure, fish grow into the available forage and hold territory near cover for years. A three-acre tank with a healthy bluegill population and a few big fish can produce bass that have never seen a hook and behave accordingly.

It also warms and cools quickly, which means the season is longer at both ends than on a reservoir. A tank will be fishable in February on a warm afternoon and again in November after the first front.

How to fish one

Walk the bank and look before you cast. Small water is readable in a way that big water is not: you can see the whole thing, find the shade, the reeds, the drop where the dam was cut, the single fallen mesquite that will hold the best fish in the pond.

Then fish the edges first, from as far back as you can manage. Bass in a small pond are aware of the bank. The first cast into an unfished corner is worth more than the next ten, and standing on the dam silhouetted against the sky costs you fish before you start.

A six-weight, a floating line, and three flies will cover it: a deer-hair popper, an olive woolly bugger in size 8, and a small weedless baitfish pattern. Fish the popper at the edges in the first and last hours. Fish the bugger slowly along the dam face when the sun is high.

Asking

Knock on the door. Say what you want to do, say you will release everything, and say when you will leave. Do not bring more than one friend. Close the gate you opened, park where you were told, and mention it if you see a fence down or a calf in trouble.

The answer is no more often than yes, and the yeses accumulate. A landowner who lets you fish once and finds the place exactly as he left it usually lets you fish again. Over a few years that becomes a list of ponds nobody else is fishing, which is worth considerably more than any piece of tackle you might buy instead.