Find the shade for Lake Austin bass

By Robert Sloan

As big bass begin lurking beneath, behind and be side structures to hide from the heat, boat docks are becoming key targets for anglers on Lake Austin.

This isn’t a secret among anglers in the area, as Texas heat has always sent anglers to shaded waters. However, a delayed heatwave across the state has fishermen counting on their favorite docks for the first time this summer.

Local fishing guide Carson Conklin likes to slingshot and skip lures as far up under a dock as he can. Although tackle can vary, he recommends a Texasrigged Senko that’s about 5 inches long.

“The bass will be feeding under the boat docks throughout the day, and they will be eating blue gill,” he said. “We don’t have a lot of bass-attracting structure on this lake, but we do have the boat docks and brush piles. They can be caught on soft plastics, with the best colors being green pumpkin and water melon seed. The key is to skip a lure under the dock so that it comes down in the shade. That’s the best tactic for getting the most bites.”

Conklin, who’s been guiding on the lake for eight years, says fishing the docks is an especially reliable approach on the weekends when the lake is overrun with boats.

However, with water temperatures holding in the upper 70s at a full water level, the best bass fisher men know to be on the water early and late to chase bigger fish. tube jigs around the boat docks. And, with strong anywhere from 250 to 400 yards out, a little past the sand bars. The hammerhead ended up striking a whole, 25-pound stingray they dropped just over the third sandbar. Line started screaming off Kamel’s 80-wide-sized reel as soon as the shark took the bait right at sundown.

“I hopped up on the rack of my truck and fed the shark line for about 20 seconds, and then slowly applied drag,” Kamel said. “The more drag I applied, the harder the shark fought. It was incredible how fast it was moving. I just knew we had hooked a large hamNot long after the fight started, Kamel had to crank the drag all the way up on his reel just to stop the shark from running any farther.

“Once I stopped the shark, I knew we had a decent chance of landing it,” Kamel said. “It became a stalemate for a little while, and then she started moving down-current.”

From the time they hooked up with the shark, a lightning storm had begun for ing over Port Mansfield and was continuing to build. Temperatures were dropping and

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