Looking for a place to take the family

Started by jay11166, May 24, 2010, 08:42:51 PM

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jay11166

Hope everyone is doing well.
I'm looking for someplace to take the family over the weekend and do a little fishing. Maybe somewhere that has a little beach area for the kids to play in the sand and water, a place to have a picnic, drop the boat in and do a little bass fishing early and then some panfish fishing with the kids... Anyone know of a place like that within a reasonable drive from FWB?  ~cf

Thanks

Jay

callmeKVD

Florala has a state park on the lake with several small beach areas. Lake Jackson state park is an Alabama state park. You could fish while it's good in the morning and catch some bream later on. The bream are on bed in several different areas in the lake. The campground there is nice, and very reasonable as well. I used to work there. Good luck Jay.

Michael Smith

jay11166

I forgot about Jackson. Thanks.
I think we're going to head to Blackwater Monday and use the Navy's MWR site. I've got to figure out Blackwater. Maybe we'll hit Jackson in the next couple weeks, I've never fished there before.

Jay

BMiles

Jackson has some big bass but you can only fish it real eary before all the jet and water skeeing nuts get active.

Swede

I'd consider Bear Lake campground near Baker.  Plenty of hiking trails, shoreline from which to fish, and clean facilities. 

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jay11166

Bear looks good. Will definitely have to drop by that one...

Thanks

Jay

screwballl

Sorry for digging this up again...

First for Bear Lake, I would suggest against swimming there. The snakes (and occasional aligator) in the water are bad in the summer. As for the fishing, it is really bad right now because of the dam break last year, it will take 4 or 5 years before the bass fishing picks up again, or until FWC restocks it. The bream and catfish may pick up by Thanksgiving this year once they get back to decent size since only small ones were left in the remaining pools and creek channel. The bass are pretty much gone down stream, so one option is some shore fishing from Krul Lake (just west of Bear Lake), which also have plenty of swimming options too, but it is more of a pond than anything.

For fishing in Okaloosa County, I would suggest Hurricane Lake at the northwest corner. 318 acres, plenty of spots for shore or boat fishing, bass of all sizes in there. Biggest I saw was one last summer around mid July that had to have been around 15 lbs., but the rest I have seen or caught have all been 12-20" and healthy.

A few others that are decent within reasonable drive is Lake Stone in northern Escambia Co (mediocre bass but excellent perch and bream fishing), Lake Victor in Holmes county (excellent bass lake, decent for bream in warmer months), and then several on the Eglin Reservation that have some good bream fishing.
Duck Pond and Indigo seem to be the 2 best but they do have minimum 8" keeper limit. Of course there are so many small ones it keeps the kids busy. Duck Pond actually has some decent bass if you can find them, but the keeper limit is also 24" (not sure if any that size has ever been caught out of any of the Eglin ponds). A few others for bream would be Speck (up the road from Indigo), Crain (on the way to Duck Pond) and sometimes Brandt Pond just north of Niceville.
For the boat, the only one that would need a boat on Eglin land is Duck Pond. The rest are more than easy enough to fish from shore.

Also there is the option of the Blackwater, Shoal and Yellow rivers for boat fishing.
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