Thread: New toLake Hamilton bad exp w/guide help

I have been coming to Lake Hamilton for years and have never done very well here, some of the problem is fishing from a ski boat with no trolling motor. I have just started to get interested in crappie fishing and normally fish for Largemouth. I learned everything I know at Lake Whitney in Texas and what an awesome lake to fish for crappie and any kind of fish. I was here a over a week ago and my father said he would pay for me to hire guide as an early christmas present. This was the most disappointing trip and I did not catch hardly any fish and the two nice size largemouth that I caught would never have happened if I would not have brought one of my own lures, the whole time I was wishing I had brought my own tackle. My first gripe is that on the second spot we went to I caught 4 fish very quickly and then the guide moved to another spot which then lead to numberous spots all over the lake to catch nothing, some of the problem was that he was moving way to fast. Later in the day I told him that the best I did was when he was preoccupied and not running the trolling motor. So it looked like it was going to be some tuff fishing and instead of him fishing with a different lure from me to figure out what would work, he would not change so I did. I have learned enough about crappie fishing to know that casting for them is not always the ticket and I could not understand why we were not staying over the brush piles and jigging them. I complained about this all day and finally I told him that I wanted to stay over the brush pile and slow down and jig but everytime I would get the jig down he would start moving the boat with trolling motor. I had only paid for a half a day but we were out on the water for a total of 10 hours and I had told him earlier I was ready to go home but he kept me out longer anyway. So finally after hours of nothing I told him I wanted to fish for largemouth so we went into a pocket. I pulled out my only lure which was a spit n image topwater and boom a caught a big one. He let me throw a couple more casts and then he moved out to another area with not luck. I then told him I wanted to go back to the pocket we were in and try to catch the big one that he spooked while fighting with a reel. We went back and bam it was a bigger one, I asked if we could weigh it and he did not have a scale. This was a little aluminum boat the back seat was broken so I had to sit on the back edge of the boat or a big cooler which i ended up getting hooked in the bottom from. There is more to the story but I will leave it at that. you have no idea how disappointed I was and I still kick myself for not doing more research but a local tackle shop gave me his card. I have moved to lake hamilton for the summer and would really like to get back on too some crappie and miss catching them. I hired the guide to learn the lake and honestly I did not learn anything and the tops that he showed me so far have not been that good and the others would be impossible for me to find. Help I want to catch some crappie

I fish it at least twice a week. It's pretty decent crappie fishing. Find the brush between 10'-20' and you'll find the crappie. But, Hamilton won't slow down until after Labor Day now. If it's not raining there will be plenty of boats out. If you don't mind fishing in the rain, wait until we get one of those slow steady rains and then go, there won't be as many boats out. There are really no quite places on the water in Hot Springs until after Labor Day.