Live in Houston and will be frequenting lake Conroe and lake Livingston. However, I'm interested in other lakes in the 1-2 hour radius I could go for some good fishing spots if anyone has some suggestions

Sam Rayburn is the best lake you fish in a 2 hour radius from Conroe

What kind of fishing? That's a pretty broad request. By username I'm going to guess bass.

Conroe seems popular with the bass guys, wether it is good or not is another topic. Somerville has pretty good catfish, and Livingston was always my go to for white bass.

Gibbons Creek

If username checks out and looking for largemouth, I'd probably go Sam Rayburn, Livingston, Somerville, Fayette (may be further than 2 hrs?) given your location.

Conroe is actually a very good lake for catfish and largemouth bass, and also bluegill and hybrid stripers.

Somerville is a good white bass lake, with decent crappie and catfish and bass.

Livingston has it all but it is huge. Loads of white bass to troll, catfish, bass in places. Rayburn has it all too, but again it is huge and you can spend all your time burning gas instead of fishing if you get impatient.

Used to pull out some hogs from Gibbons. Spring semesters fishing the inlet on lake fork magic shad...White, dip the tails in chartreuse. They'd blow up on topwater around that point too.

Thanks for the memory.

mosdefn14 said:

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Used to pull out some hogs from Gibbons. Spring semesters fishing the inlet on lake fork magic shad...White, dip the tails in chartreuse. They'd blow up on topwater around that point too.

Thanks for the memory.

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We used to absolutely smack the LMB with top water frogs at Gibbons. Great little lake. Go hang out with the bikers at that bar, drink some beers and eat a burger after your morning fishing.

Thanks for the suggestions. To clarify I'd primarily be fishing for white and largemouth bass as well as catfish. I'm relatively new to fishing for white bass if anyone has lure/technique recommendations

From a boat? Troll pet spoons or kastmasters behind a hellbender at about 20' depth over channels or submerged hills. Once you zero in, you can switch to little George's or slab spoons if you want to work a big school around a structure.

MouthBQ98 said:

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From a boat? Troll pet spoons or kastmasters behind a hellbender at about 20' depth over channels or submerged hills. Once you zero in, you can switch to little George's or slab spoons if you want to work a big school around a structure.

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This every day during the summer.

Don't drive up on the spillway

I'll be doing just that on my first fishing trip when I get back to Texas.

How would you set these lines up? I've seen a lot of information about mono backing for braided line with fluoro leaders. There's too much information out there to get clear instruction for line setups.

Medium heavy 8-20lb line for crankbaits/spinnerbaits.

2 medium rods at 6-12lb for worms

8-15lb for topwater/ frogs.

I've fished mono 8-12 lb for bass rods. I'd go to 20 lb for trolling rigs because I always run a stringer of spoons behind the hellbenders and you can get three fish at a time if you hit the right spot at the right time.

hellbender [4-6 ft line] 1st pet spoon [3ft line] 2nd pet spoon [3ft line] 3rd pet spoon was my usual rig