Bluegill Lake
Cabins
Do you want to go to a place where you can catch all the sunfish you want in rustic pine covered surroundings? Recently I noticed an item on the Texas Fishing Forum about a place called Bluegill Lake Cabins. It was a small mention but it caught my eye so I searched for the name on Google and found this website. I called the number and talked to an interesting gentleman named Devon Weatherford. Turns out he and his wife Judy own 32 acres in the Texas piney woods near Canton. On this land are several small lakes, the Weatherford farmhouse and four rustic cabins, which the Weatherfords rent.
Devon told me the lakes are heavily stocked with sunfish, bass, catfish and tulip but with emphasis on the sunfish, which are fed and managed for size and numbers.
The place sounded too good to be true, but I reserved the smallest cabin for my wife and I for two nights about two weeks in advance. My wife, the best selling author Caroline Clemmons, has just finished her latest novel and wanted to decompress, and I wanted to catch sunfish.
We arrived at the cabins on Thursday morning just ahead of a weekend-long thunderstorm. The cabin we choose is called the Feed Store Cabin because that it what it once was. Devon restored it to its original appearance and outfitted it. It has a television with Dish TV, a stove, microwave, air conditioning, a queen-sized bed, and a bathroom with an old claw-footed tub. It is completely hidden in the pines and only about a hundred yards from two of the ponds.
I barely had the car unloaded before I was on the A-Frame cabin dock. Unlike the Feed Store, The A-Frame Cabin is right on the water of the largest pond, and it has a dock attached to the back porch. Devon graciously invited me to fish on the docks of any of the unoccupied cabins.
This is the A-Frame Cabin.
I rigged my favorite ultra light rig with a slip bobber and impaled a cricket. I caught a Bluegill on every cast and on the fourth or fifth cast I caught this big fella.
Now I realize this fish is no record, but you have to remember I am used to 6 or 7 inch Bluegill from the area lakes.
I caught sunfish one after the other. Some were caught on crickets, some on worms, and a few on a little gold Mepp's spinner. I included the Redear to illustrate there were several species, and put the little 7-inch Bluegill to illustrate a point. Back home in Lake Weatherford I would have been thrilled to catch a batch of fish that size. Here they were bait stealers. How fickle we are.
I sat on the dock and hauled one big Bluegill after another for two or three hours until I noticed the sky suddenly get dark and ominous thunder and lightning. It started raining. I was willing to get wet, but sitting on a dock in a lightning storm is not how I got to be 75 years old. I beat it back to the cabin. I spent the rest of the day reading a paperback in the dry and air-conditioned cabin. That was not why I was paying $110 bucks a day.
The next morning my oldest daughter Stephanie drove down to fish with me. We started at the A-frame dock again, but Devon suggested we try the dock behind Rose's Cabin instead because the bigger Bluegill hung out at that end of the lake.
We sat on the dock and caught literally hundreds of fish of all sizes and several species. We caught native Bluegills, hybrid bluegills, coppernose Bluegills, Warmouth, and bass, all on crickets and worms. At first we fished with a slip bobber but I lost so many of the Thill 3-buck premium bobbers that I took my last one off and began fishing tight line on the bottom. It was the best move of the day. I caught my biggest and most fish after I ditched the bobber.
We fished until 1000 crickets and a trash bucket of worms were gone. We caught hundreds. For the first time in my long life I was tired of catching fish. We let them all go. I was on vacation, not cleaning fish.
If you want to go to the cabins, call Devon and Judy Weatherford on 903-479-3554. The cabins run $110 - $150 per day for two people. Additional persons are $10. They are located between Canton and Athens off Highway 19.
