J.B. Webb — Remembering those early days on Lake Ray Roberts
I started my guiding on Lake Ray Roberts. G.A. Miller, who I have written about before, and I were walking the land where the lake was going to lay. Not having the electronics then as we do now, He and I used houses and barns and anything else on the bank we could see and triangled them with a compass.
G.A. was keeper of the book. Then when the lake was felling you could fish off the bank; later they opened it to boats but no motors. G.A. decided we needed to go up on the north end to mark some spots there to fish if there was a high north wind.
He had a 14-foot pond boat that wasn’t heavy. Unknown to me until later he put a wooden floor in it and two swivel fishing seats. Now with no motors allowed we had paddles. G.A. found a grown-up road with a gate that someone had torn up trying to get in. His boat didn’t feel two heavy as we wrestled it over the fence.
You could see the water a good ways off. It was downhill and the grass was slick, high and full of big chiggers. We didn’t find this out to later, so we made good time going down.
Getting to the lake I found I was going to row the boat while G.A. fished. I couldn’t walk on water; it was his boat so I rowed. He caught fish and when I let it drift, I caught fish. Those were the golden days on Lake Ray Roberts.
I rowed us back to shore after about eight hours or so of rowing and fishing. We were tired and it occurred to us it was a long way to his van and it was all uphill. We started out dragging his boat. A fourth of the way up we decided to carry it. When we got to the van, I could scratch my ankles with out bending over my arms were so stretched.
We had lots more stories I could tell and I might of our adventures on the new Lake. I lived in Denison when I started guiding and it was a long haul to Roberts for a trip but I made them.
I learned a lot from some friends of mine from Pilot Point on where to go and what to use. Finally, I decided to just stay up here and guide on Texoma, which I have for over 20 years until I semi-retired.
I’m still housebound with Susan but she is really coming on, so next week I think I’ll go fishing. I have been going down every morning to make sure the gate is open.
With gas getting as high as it is and going higher, I can see why there are hardly any boats at our ramp. It’s fast coming to the point where you ask: do I fish or buy food? If a person with a boat just buys five gallons of gas and is honest enough to pay our $10 launch fee has already spent $30 and the boat isn’t even off the trailer and it’s going to just keep moving up.
Weather didn’t keep the Little Dixie Bass Club from having their March Tournament. Thirty-eight people showed up to fish in the 19 boats. They caught a total of 40 fish brought to the weigh-in. While not as big as the February fish, the top five had decent weights for a rough day of fishing.
Winning was Larry Wills and Jack Mills with five fish at 15.12 pounds, second was Sid Tolbert and Brandon Lawson with five fish totaling 13.80 pounds and big bass a 5.14-pounder, third place was Alex Johnson and Peyton Stephens with five fish at 12.77 pounds, fourth was John Warsher and Ron Giesler with five fish going 10 pounds and fifth place was Brad Tolbert and Charlie Keene with five going at 8.92 pounds.
Talking to some of my guide friends they say if you are going fishing, go early. There is a little bird action just at daylight. Still homebound for a while but I’m frothing at the mouth to get on the water.
This article originally appeared on Herald Democrat: JB Webb Column Remembering those early days on Lake Ray Roberts
