Falcon Lake, TX — the best bass lake in the country? It was, but it may be coming back.

Most of us know by now that Bassmaster magazine named Falcon Lake the best bass lake in the country. I must agree. My two sons and my son-in-law (and I) have caught our personal bests there in the last year. One of the fish was a ShareLunker. (For those of you not familiar with the Texas program, a ShareLunker is a 13-pound-plus bass that is contributed to Texas Parks and Wildlife to be used in their selective breeding program, with an intent to grow unusually large Florida strain bass. For details on the program, check TPWD's ShareLunker website.

Not every day is red hot however. Some days we really struggled. Here is a picture of an 8-plus my youngest son caught just moments before he caught the ShareLunker.

This little fatty weighed about 8.5 pounds caught December 28, 2012.

This was the third day of our trip and we were only going to stay half a day. Well, after a few hours fishing we caught 30 or more bass up to 13.36 pounds. That was more than we caught in the two previous days. The difference? The wind changed from the north to the south and the surface temperature went up several degrees. The fish really turned on for us.

Although we caught fish on a variety of baits, by far, the Strike King XD6 crankbait was the best for not only size, but numbers.

We found a ledge — by accident — that was full of fish.

How we retrieved the crankbait was the key. Just chucking and winding produced some small bass, but bouncing it through the rocks on the ledge and then stopping it when it came off the ledge is what made the biggest ones react — and they hit really hard. The ledge went from the bank sloping to about seven feet deep and then dropping straight off to another ledge out to 14 feet, finally dropping to more than 20 feet deep in the river channel.

Since then, we've caught fish every time we've fished that ledge. Unfortunately, it is not as good as it was. Some locals saw us catching fish from that spot in one of our trips and they have now taken up residence bank fishing there. They have been there every time I've been on Falcon lately.

Rocks and brush are some of the best places to look for big bass on Falcon, but I have also caught some really good ones on ledges with no brush and big trees. Not bushes but big trees. Many of the trees line river or creek channels, which makes them good places for a big one. But you may fish 20 or 30 trees for one or two big ones (if any).

I've broken off several good ones in the big trees on 65-pound braided line.

One other bait that is really working for me is Zoom Magnum Flukes. I'll talk about them some other time.

Hopefully, this will help you on your next trip to Falcon. If you have not been there, I think the next year is still going to be good. After that, I'm not sure what will happen.

Here is another trip report: