July was a good month for big fish out here on Lake Fork. We didn’t have very many days with high numbers of fish, but we were often targeting bigger fish anyway. The offshore spots on the lake were pounded by heavy fishing pressure and we had to think outside the box to find catchable fish. I used my electronics to find them, and some days we spent more time looking than actually fishing. Once we found them set up right, it was often a challenge to catch them. In the past, finding the school of fish was 90% of the battle, but this year the presentation was critical. All month I had rods all over the deck and beside the console rigged with crankbaits, football jigs, spoons, swimbaits, and on and on it goes. However, often it paid off because we would figure out exactly what worked best on the given day.

Once again, like last year, we had a relatively mild July and fish were spread from top to bottom. No thermocline had set up to push the fish out of extreme depths, and many of our fish came deeper than 30′ of water. We recently had some cool rainy weather that mixed things up even more.

Below are some nice fish we boated this month. Also, included are some pictures of my Lowrance HDS unit that I took to show what I’m looking for when I idle around graphing offshore structure on Lake Fork during the summer. These pictures show bass that are catchable, they were grouped up tightly, on top of the “dinner table” (high spot where they feed), and stacked on top of each other.

Below is a fish caught from the school pictured above.