Camping and Fishing Report Hanks Creek, Sam Rayburn Lake USA...

 If I counted up right as I reviewed back through this blog there have been 10 camping trips this year. For #10 we did not range too far from home as we set up at Hanks Creek which is about 20 minutes from our house and the jumping off point to our favorite fishing spots. As blues man Taj Mahal said "many fish bite if you got good bait" and bite they did this weekend. 

Though we camped by ourselves we were joined by daughter Katie from Chicago who was in for a funeral of a friend's mom, the Zamora family (there was fried catfish to eat) and our friends Sherri and Peter. Final total for catching fish was 42 for this three night trip with is right in line with a trip we had 15 years ago this weekend where we tent camped, it was colder, rained and we caught 48 fish. 

By the way, all those fish were eaten.

The lake is almost 9' low as you can see from the large exposed beach in the background of this photo. The fish were holding in the creek channels about 7 feet deep so they are still hanging in the same areas but it's worth a note that we have caught 100s of fish on that exposed sandbar behind these fishers. 

Yeah mama, eat it every day if I could. 

I don't think I got a photo of Katie or Miguel but they might not have fishing licenses and in a surveillance society no need to incriminate.   

Big gator living in the campground cove. This photo taken in sight of our boat docking spot. 

Bikes always fun on a campout. 

Not many campers in the park. We saw maybe 6-8 sites occupied but many are still closed from hurricane damage last summer or spots where you could pull a boat up are not close to the water with the lack of rain and dam repair draw downs. One bathroom is closed. All camper we talked to were catch catfish but I think they were mostly fishing deep so take your pick. Fish are everywhere. 

No trips currently on the books but I'm open to suggestions.