The saying if you build it they will come is certainly true for fishermen. In Texas it has been 34 years since fishermen had a new reservoir to explore — that was until a couple of weeks ago when Bois d’Arc Lake went online in Fannin County.
Years in the planning, the 16,641-acre reservoir was developed by the North Texas Municipal Water District. While it was the water district that came up with the lake design to provide water for Dallas-area suburbs, it partnered with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department to develop the fishery.
That, of course, begs the question, how do you devise a management plan for a such a large body of water?
“A lot of it is kind of following the recipe from back in the day for Lake Fork and Ray Roberts while using some new tools like the (Toyota) ShareLunker largemouth bass,” explained Dan Bennett, TPWD district inland fisheries biologist in Denison.
TPWD started having talks with NTMWD in 2016 about what could be done to give the fishery a head start, and to ensure its quality for years to come. The first request was to leave as much timber as possible. While 100% is never a possibility, about a third of the timber within the lake’s imprint remains.
Like the approach at Lake Fork, the next step was to locate existing ponds that would eventually be inundated by the lake.
“In 2018 we cleared out the fish population in them, then went in and stocked them with forage and then with six-inch ShareLunkers. A year or two after that, they started backing up water in front of the dam. They had several hundred acres of water and we started stocking ShareLunkers in that,” Bennett explained.
Between 2018 and 2020, TPWD laid a good foundation by stocking 3,116 ShareLunker offspring, including 631 adults not needed for state hatcheries. As the lake continued to fill, an additional 92,000 bass fingerlings were stocked in 2021.
While the filling lake was also stocked with channel catfish, bluegill and threadfin shad, the biggest release of largemouth bass came in 2023 when the department released 278,000 Lone Star bass. Lone Stars are the ultimate extension of the ShareLunker program, where the department made a move to make all male and female broodfish used in hatcheries are former ShareLunker babies.
With a potential growth rate of 2 to 2.5 pounds annually, the department is expecting the fish to perform well in the lake. Located in the northern Post Oak Savannah in the Red River drainage, Bennett said he expects the sandy soil reservoir’s fertility to be close to East Texas reservoirs. With just three age classes of bass before it opened though, the opening-day fishery probably is not a good representation of its potential.
Guide Jason Conn has fished the lake almost daily since it opened, and on week two set the early lake record with a 9.05-pounder, along with three others over 8.
“I think it is going to be something special. The bass are short and fat, which shows they are still young. They fight like crazy, but there are plenty of places for them to hide for a while,” Conn said.
Although Bois d’Arc is new water to him, he has been guiding for more than a decade on Fork and O.H. Ivie. But living in nearby Bonham, Bois d’Arc has become his new home lake.
With only three public ramps available, the lake has been busy but not overwhelmed. Conn said that could be good because fishing can be difficult even though the bass have not been overly pressured.
“It is actually tough out there. Some fishermen are not catching much at all. From what I have found, there is a lot of dead water on the lake,” Conn said.
He added there is also a lot of flooded bushes, trees and hay bales where the fish can go that fishermen cannot get to yet.
With the amount of open water around the lake, Conn said fishing the lake reminds him more of Lake Ray Roberts than Lake Fork. As a proponent of forward-facing sonar, he said it is also a little bit like Ivie with a lot of brush in 20- to 25-feet of water and expects that to be productive when weights are up in winter. Having caught a 17.03, the eighth largest bass on record in Texas, on Ivie in February 2023, Conn has experience with that style of fishing.
The lake opened with a five fish, 16-inch maximum length limit. TPWD’s Bennett said that was done to minimize early mortality because the stocked fish have not had as much time to mature as they did before openings at Fork or Ray Roberts.
Along with bass the lake also has catfish, crappie, white bass and bluegill.
For more information on fishing Bois d’Arc, contact Conn at (972) 529-8758.
