Whenever my fishing buddy and I go to a PWF lake, we always check the shoreline and stickups for lures that might have been lost by other PWF fishermen.  That's usually a good clue what others have been using successfully in a lake.  For instance, at Black Hat, we saw some braid line dangling from the concrete overflow structure and upon closer inspection, we found a black 7-inch lizard tied on.  So we switched our bait offering to lizards and were rewarded with three nice sized bass.  Here are other examples:  at Weston, we found two Heddon baby torpedos on the ends of branches and reasoned that the topwater bite was possible.  So we gathered in the torpedos, tied them on and whammo, some great early topwater action followed.  At Leonard Clymer Lake, we found some hot pink worms while launching our jonboat.  So, after a visit to Cabela's, we started pitching bright pink worms in stained water and were successful, while other worms failed.  Finally, at Sulphur Bluff Timber Lake, we found a buzzbait, a crawdad-colored Rat-L-Trap and a Heddon Zara Spook minus propellers.  During the day, all three of these lures produced bass for us.  Moral to story:  keep a watchful eye on the shoreline.  It could pay off in big dividends.

Bob Cantin, Fish Commissioner

Heritage Ranch G&CC

Fairview, TX

Only thing I've ever found was used plastics in the bottom of the boats. I figured they didn't work that is why they were discarded. I have a garbage bag that I collect my used plastics and bring them home for waste management to recycle into a color that works. Maybe I never get that close to the shoreline or I'm so focused on my target.  So you would think that anything that gets hung up is retrievable. 

A long time ago in a place far far away when I was just a lad I use to take a 12 inch piece of lead pipe then straighten out coat hangers. I would run the coat hangers thru the pipe and then back through. The loop at the top I would tie on a rope. I would dredge the bottom and bring up bird nests of line, sinkers and lures.  I would spend my summer days putting new hooks on lures and cleaning the lures. Then I'd go back to the river and sell it back to the fishermen.  I bet I sold over 100 pounds of sinkers every summer. One summer I sold two dozen river runts.  Oh the fun of being a kid.

On my last trip to Timber Lake, I recovered a hollow body frog I'd lost on my first trip to that lake. It's stiffer, but it catches more fish now!