As we drive around the pastureland, I try to imagine fish swimming in front of the windshield. “When the lake is full, this spot where we are will be under about 20 feet of water,” says Dan Bennett, district supervisor for the Denison region of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department's (TPWD) Inland Fisheries Division.

We bounce around in his truck, looking at the newly installed fish habitat — concrete globes riddled with fish-sized holes, and piles of logs artfully arranged to accommodate fishy residents. The structures, which seem to go on forever, are the product of work done by Bennett and his team of fisheries specialists over the past several months. In the next year or so, waters will inundate this valley to become Texas' newest reservoir: Lake Ralph Hall.

For most fisheries biologists, it's rare to work on a new reservoir project and build a fishery from the ground up. Until the creation of Lake Bois d'Arc in Northeast Texas in the 2020s, it had been more than 30 years since the state built its last reservoir - when O.H. Ivie filled the Colorado River valley behind a big earthen dam. Bennett has been fortunate. For the second time in less than five years, he and his team are working to build quality habitat from scratch on this second, brand-new reservoir.

The Lakes

Whether by accident or through some master plan, Fannin County has become lake country. In all, six public lakes dot the county's blackland prairies and post oak savannahs. Now, a seventh is on the way. Lake Crockett and Coffee Mill Lake anchor the 13,360-acre Bois d'Arc Creek Unit of the Caddo National Grasslands. The federally owned, 225-acre Lake Fannin is managed by the county. Bonham State Park and the City of Bonham each have their own lake. The North Texas Municipal Water District recently opened the 16,000-acre Bois d'Arc Lake. Soon, in 2026, Lake Ralph Hall (named after the late congressman) will begin to fill to around 7,600 acres.

Historically, fish habitat has been an afterthought in lake construction. With these two new reservoirs, Bennett and team provided input early in the process.

“About 2016, we started having a few meetings with North Texas Municipal Water District to talk about fishing and recreational uses for the lake and how Texas Parks and Wildlife could partner with them,” says Bennett. “They were asking our opinion about how to make it as good a fishery as possible. Of course, we were excited about working on the first new lake in probably 30 years. We saw how making a quality fishing lake from the ground up would be an opportunity of a lifetime.”

Bois d'Arc Lake's primary purpose is to provide drinking water for a fast-growing Dallas Metroplex. Fish and recreation weren't necessarily top priorities.

However, Bennett says the lake builders were receptive to the fisheries team's input. To that end, brush piles from downed trees were anchored to the lake's bottom to provide cover habitat for all kinds of fish. Timber was left standing in a large portion of the lake's western end. Like the brush piles, this standing timber provides cover for the entire food web - from the tiniest microinvertebrates and plankton all the way up to forage fish that largemouth bass feed on. Long before Bois d'Arc Lake filled, Bennett's team was able to prepare four brood ponds that would ultimately provide the seed stock to populate the lake with world-class largemouth genetics.

“The North Texas Municipal Water District allowed us to preserve and renovate the fish populations at Bois d'Arc Lake within the brood ponds,” Bennett says. “These ponds total about 20 acres of water, with the largest pond being around 10 acres in size.”

In 2019, TPWD introduced forage fish like fathead minnows, sunfish and shad. The following fall, the fisheries team stocked the brood ponds with 6- to 9-inch fingerling bass that are the offspring of largemouths from the Toyota ShareLunker program.

With Lake Ralph Hall, the fisheries team approach is the same as it was with Bois d'Arc. They've developed brood ponds stocked with ShareLunker offspring and requested that the controlling authority, the Upper Trinity Regional Water District, anchor brush piles to the bottom of the cleared areas and leave as much standing timber as possible for fish habitat. However, with the award of a National Fish Habitat Partnership grant funded by Bass Pro Shops for Lake Ralph Hall, they've also been able to build habitat concentrated in specific areas and construct broad areas of spawning habitat that'll ensure the fish that inhabit this new lake are productive for a long time.

The Anatomy of a Fish Habitat

Like all wildlife, fish have specific habitat requirements. Water is a given, but beyond that, each fish species requires food, shelter, space and the arrangement of all of the above. The exact recipe depends on the particular type of fish and life stage, but fish need more than just open water to thrive. That was the focus of the habitat improvements at Bois d'Arc Lake. Funding through the state's Conservation License Plate program was used to construct gravel spawning beds and procure and place artificial fish habitats in multiple locations in the reservoir. That's the same approach currently underway at Lake Ralph Hall.

The approach to building the habitat from the ground up is multifaceted. As Bennett and I drive around the future lakebed, multiple constructed piles of logs and stones are strewn about the 100 or so acres that we survey. Called spider piles, these habitat structures consist of long cedar logs with large, softball- to volleyball-sized stones piled in the middle — the logs in the structure jut at an upward angle from the core. The spider piles create folds and edges where bait fish and young bass can hide.

Interspersed between the spider piles are bay balls. These 2-foot-tall, 500-pound concrete balls are pocked with holes that allow fish to swim in and out of the structures. Originally designed to create artificial reefs in shallow coastal waters, these bay balls look unusual amid the natural stone and cedar logs. However, this is a time-tested habitat structure that's quick to deploy and easy to place.

Tree and brush piles are consolidated in the reservoir's lower third to lower half in areas that will ultimately be below 15 to 30 feet of water at the future conservation elevation. These brush piles are 50 to 100 feet long and 30 to 50 feet wide.

“Over there is where we're putting spawning beds,” Bennett says, motioning toward the lower portion of the reservoir. “We make those out of pea gravel and the fish will hopefully build nests where they'll lay eggs during the spawning season.”

These five spawning areas are an immense 10,000 square feet each and lie along the lake shore, where the shoreline is protected from encroachment. Furthermore, native aquatic vegetation is being planted around existing ponds in these same areas.

Also part of the Bass Pro Shops grant, a 250-foot jetty was constructed to enhance angler access at Lake Ralph Hall. When the lake opens, the jetty will provide shoreline access for anglers. Along the jetty, the fisheries team is placing habitat components to increase the number of fish that use the area. Besides the jetty, both lakes feature boat ramps for anglers who wish to pursue bass, crappie or catfish.

One of the critical components of the entire lake-building strategy is brood ponds. The North Texas Municipal Water District partnered with Texas Parks and Wildlife to maintain four of the largest ponds within the footprint of Bois d'Arc Lake. These ponds were used as nursery ponds to give the fishery a jump-start when the reservoir filled. These young bass will establish trophy largemouth bass genetics in both lakes.

Since Bois d'Arc Lake began to fill, Texas Parks and Wildlife has been able to stock bluegill and threadfin shad forage fish. In addition, they've stocked well over 400,000 channel catfish and over 95,000 Florida largemouth bass.

The bass are direct descendants of 13-pound or larger bass donated by Texas anglers to the Toyota ShareLunker program. Bois d'Arc Lake opened with a restrictive 16-inch maximum length limit to protect larger bass for as long as possible to allow them several years to spawn and establish a trophy bass population.

Although Ralph Hall is still under construction, stocking the lake's brood ponds began back in 2022. Bennett hopes Ralph Hall and Bois d'Arc will experience a phenomenon called the “new lake effect.”

“When we inundate a new reservoir, fish growth is fast!” Bennett explains, “I think we're going to have some particularly massive bass being caught out of Bois d'Arc [and Lake Ralph Hall] in the next five years or so.”

He says there's always a lot of top-quality habitat and forage fish in a new reservoir, so the fish will thrive initially. “The first 10 to 20 years of these new lakes should be pretty phenomenal just due to all the available habitat that gets inundated when the lakes fill.”

The Early Results

Since 1986, anglers who fish Texas lakes have had the opportunity to donate their trophy largemouth bass for breeding and subsequent restocking of the progeny back into Texas waters. The goal has always been to propagate good bass genetics and make Texas bass fisheries more productive.

Between Jan. 1 and March 31 each year, anglers who catch a largemouth over 13 pounds can donate the fish to the ShareLunker program. These breeder fish provide the offspring for future stockings in Texas lakes.

Professional angler and bass fishing guide Jason Conn knows a bit about the ShareLunker program, as he's on record for having caught the eighth-largest bass in Texas history in 2023. He's also seeing success on Bois d'Arc Lake and enjoys sharing his reservoir knowledge with his clients.

“I've been guiding the lake since the day it opened,” says Conn. “The fishing has been really good for my clients and me so far, and I am super-impressed with the fish, their growth rates and the size of bass we already have.”

Currently, Conn holds the lake record for largemouth bass. The fish measured an astounding 9.05 pounds and 20 inches in length. Impressive, considering that the fish were stocked in the brood ponds only five years ago. He says that when he finds the fish, they are in big groups, but there is also a lot of “dead water” or areas the fish have yet to find. He's not dissuaded by that, however. He thinks the lake is amazing already and believes that many fishing records will be broken in the future due to the new fishery.

Since opening for anglers in the spring of 2024, Bois d'Arc Lake's results look promising. In the first six months that the lake was open for recreation, anglers caught an estimated 133,528 fish (including 39,000 bass and 66,000 crappie) and harvested 50,205 fish (including 43,107 crappie and 4,167 catfish).

According to Bennett, fish scale samples submitted to TPWD's genetic lab for one 8-pound bass caught by Conn indicated it was a fingerling stocked by TPWD into one of the brood ponds that was eventually flooded by the reservoir. According to the genetic testing, the bass was a Florida largemouth bass and is the offspring of ShareLunker No. 577, which was donated to TPWD's selective breeding program in 2019 by an angler who caught the fish from Marine Creek Lake near Fort Worth.

Conn is optimistic about the new lake's future and is moving his guide service here.

“I'm having fun learning about the lake because it's close to home for me,” he says, adding that he continues to be surprised by the size of the fish he's catching. “The fish here are setting up to be something extraordinary. They are super short and fat and very wide - and these suckers fight.”

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