RSemmes

Awesome! I’ll be out there trying to snag a few.

Catt, I’ll be up next week for almost 2 weeks. I have a boat with space in it if you want to come. I need to learn from the pro anyway. If interested let me know.

How do you guys fish flats? Is it just a matter of pulling up on a flat and start fishing it or do you look for key elements within that flat? Would i be correct to approach a flat and fish it close to the drop offs and stay near the edges close to deeper water? Some of the flats that i explored the past week did not have much of anything besides hard bottom. Not seeing much structure or cover of any sort aside from the bluffs on the edges of them.

I am still learning myself, but we can set something up and do some exploration for sure. What i have been doing is spending a lot of time on the Navionics app on my phone and computer mapping potential spots out and i check them when i am in search mode. It also doesn't hurt to have the hot spots map and the hook n line map as well. The last 2-3 trips i have had we checked multiple areas deep and did not locate any out on the main lake. We were able to locate a few this last trip off of the main creeks in deeper water and the rest were caught in 6-8' off of a main lake point. PM me your info and we can try and link up when i am in from offshore.

Darold Gleason or Jason Courville.

Fished all day yesterday, caught 18 bass in 8-12' of water Carolina rigging a fluke. Looked deep and on hunps and nothing, fished banks and no fish. Everything seemed to come in first half of creeks. Today we had 7 good fish 3-4lb range and 3 smaller fish all caught on C-rig. Almost all of these fish came off of one spot. Fished today until about 2 when the wind blew us off of lake. Fished everything extremely slow!!!

Wesley, You aren't the only one! I spent a good bit of time searching, i did not find anything deep at all. I did miss a few fish, I may have set the hook a little early lol. It's like they were grabbing the back of my soft plastics, if I had hooked every fish I would have still only had 8 total. This deep fishing still kicking my butt!!!

fished Saturday mostly morning, only caught 4 smaller fish. Most came right off of a channel swing, in mouth of a creek in stained water on tx rigged green pumpkin w/chartreuse tail. All in 6-12' water. Searched for hours deep and found nothing. Checked humps in Arnold's and nothing, bluff walls in housen nothing, and few other ridges and bluff walls with no luck.

I was assuming water would be rising, didn't think about them running generators to maintain lake level.

with the the warmer weather and rain, will that push the fish further up shallow? I am heading up Friday and plan to fish deep most of the time, but curious if I have the right idea with warming weather and rising waters. Thanks, Ryan

Anyone heading up to Toledo Bend next weekend? If all goes well, i will be up Friday-Sunday. I have a friend who is at the lake right now who caught 19 keepers, from his picture he had 4-5 nice ones. He did not go into much detail, but he was catching them between 10-20' of water. He mentioned that they were high in the water column and caught almost all of them on flukes.

For me i am just curious because i fished a good bit of the Indian mounds area. I spent a good 2hrs riding ledges and long points and never really found any deep. I even tried fishing the bank a little with no luck, but it was my last resort since i am trying to learn to catch/locate them in the deeper water. I will say, the only 2 fish i caught were deep and the bigger fish that spit my partners bait was in the same area. I am assuming although we did not catch much that i could have still been in the right area? Maybe i just could not get them to bite. The fist spot we went had fish scattered, i did not find them schooled up much, but we did get that little bit of action. How do you guys locate a productive channel swing? is it a matter of just riding and checking to see if the fish or on it or not? or specific things that you look for on a map to decide whether you will even check that particular channel swing out? I went to one in the negreet area close to those 2 islands, i fished the channel swing just north of that first island where the point comes out from the island and had a ton of structure/woods but did not have one bite. I am new to fishing channel swings so this was my first actual trip fishing some. Do you fish the inside part of the swing (the flatter part) or the steep side or is this relative to the time of year?

That would be great. If your up for it, I have the camp and will pay for the food, fuel, etc. Shoot me a PM and we can try and arrange something. I would really appreciate that opportunity.

Went to Toledo on the 3rd and 4th without much luck. I checked several ledges and drop offs with no luck. fished long points with steep drops in Indian mounds, I traveled along the contours in most of the area and was unable to locate any fish deep. Tried fishing channel swings as well without any luck. Next we tried a few point and flats with no bites at all. Fished shallow without a bite. When fishing deep I used a Carolina rigged fluke, black and blue jig, tried to throw a 8xd parallel to ledge, and tx rigged senko. I caught 2 fish around 2lbs both on Carolina rigged fluke and my fishing partner dropped a 6+ that spit is chatter bait that he was fishing on bottom. I am just learning to fish deep this last year or two, but getting pretty frustrating not catching. I am spending a lot of time searching before I even fish. I have progressed since I am able to catch a few deep now but this last trip has me frustrated. I just don't know exactly what I am doing wrong. But I'm going to keep working on it and hopefully I can start catching bass consistently.

Thanks Bass_Fanatic. I appreciate the info!

What Lake Master Chip is best for Toledo Bend? I went to purchase one online and see they had a few different types. Lake Master Electronic Chart, Lake Master Electronic Chart Plus, Lake Master Auto Chart Pro, and the Lake Master Auto Chart. I have a hummingbird 999 HD SI GPS combo and a Lowrance HDS 7, I was going to remove my Navionics Platinum Plus chip from the hummingbird and put it in the Lowrance and get a lakemaster for the Hummingbird unit. I just did not see any info showing the differences between the chips I was looking at. Thanks, Ryan

If you mean "In Trees" as in brush piles, then yes. They will have plenty stacked up on the brush piles by then. Usually in depths of 18-25' of water by mid May. If you find some brush piles you will catch fish. I would try some jigs too if the shiners aren't producing for you.

Just want to introduce myself, I have been reading over this forum off and on for the last 2 years and learning a lot of valuable information about this lake and how to fish it. Now actually doing it is a different story!!! lol. Thanks to everyone for all the input and information linked to this forum. Just a little info on myself, I have fished Toledo bend since I was a kid (over 20 years now) and I have always done sac a lait fishing with my grandfather and my father, but over the last several years became really hooked on bass fishing. My first year or so was spent pounding the banks, since then I have used this forum and lots of my own research to try and learn how to locate bass in the deeper water. I have had some, but little success in the deeper water. I am still fairly new to deep water fishing, I hope to see if any of the info and map study I have done will pay off in the upcoming months. Thanks, Ryan