Getting Reel - Fishing News

Falcon Kicks Amistad Where It Counts!

by Don Zaegel on April 16th, 2008

     Whatever is in the water that flows up and down the Rio Grande River that help the Florida strain largemouth and it’s forage flourish is helping both Falcon Lake and Lake Amistad produced huge bass. In reality we know it’s not the water, it’s a combination of both the climate and the nutrients from the abundant underwater structure that provide both cover and a food source for the fish that habitat these lakes. Regardless, these two lakes are without a doubt two of the premier bass fishing lakes in the whole country right now. If not the top two. Debating that would be pretty hard to do.

     A big question among many bass fisherman today revolves around, “What is the best bass fishing lake in America”? Whatever the answer is, it is usually going to be either Falcon Lake or Lake Amistad. So by going off of the assumption that one of these two lakes is the best lake in America, lets use some recent data to help guide us in our journey to determine which is the better of the two. Falcon Lake or Lake Amistad?

     The BASS Elite Series recently made a stop on both of the two lakes. The stops fell within a week of eachother. The relevance to that is that both tournaments fell around very similar times of the year giving way to the same seasonal patterns for the fishing. So debate as far as the time of the year can go right out the window. 

     To help me settle this debate I simply will go ahead and throw up a few statistics from the two events and then declare my own winner of the two. So additional considerations may be taken into account, but for the most part I will rely solely on the data. So, here you go:

*Number for both lakes are only using data from the Pro (boater) side

Falcon Lake:

     40+lb sacks - 3

     30+lb sacks - 44

     Big Bass of the tournament: 10.6 lbs

     Winning weight: 132.8 lbs

     **Notable: While the data to figure how many fish over 8 lbs were caught, I can figure up the winners average weight. Paul Elias averaged a 33 lb sack to win the event over 4 days. His average weight of fish was 6.6 lbs. That’s amazing. Also worth mentioning is that there where six anglers that had beaten the previous 4 day total weight record of 122+ lbs. In addition, the single weight record also came close to falling victim to Terry Scroggins who missed it by less than a pound with his day 4 catch of 44.4 lbs.

Lake Amistad:

     40+ lb bags:  0

     30+ lb bags: 1

     Big Bass of the tournament: 8.13 lbs

     Winning Weight: 76.15 lbs (over 3 days)

     **Notable: Even while considering the event was shortened a day due to heavy winds, I will give the benefit of the doubt to Lake Amistad and add another day of weight to the three day average weight of winner Todd Faircloth’s catch. Faircloth’s average day weight was 25.6 over 3 days. Assuming he averaged that again on day 4, had there been one, and his overall weight would have been  101+ lbs. That also would have given him a 5.08 average size fish.

     While both lakes are undoubtedly putting up numbers never seen and hard to duplicate, it seems as though as of this moment in time, Falcon Lake is beating out Lake Amistad. The other stiff debate that I think Amistad has against Falcon is the difference in pressure it receives. Even with that however, I still think that the size of the lakes and the amount of pressure that they receive are not true indicators of what we just saw these past few weeks. Since that is the case, you may need to find another lake to put up against Falcon to determine exactly what is the best bass fishing lake in America. If you want to talk world, well than you would be hard pressed to put numbers up against each other like this given the uniqueness of having the same anglers fish on both lakes within a week of each other. That in itself make it hard to debate.

     What are your thought on the tournament results and what the future hold for both of these two lakes.

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POSTED IN: BASS, BASS Elite Series, Miscellaneous