Sugar Lake offers plenty of sweet bass fishing

By MATT WILLIAMS
Eagle Columnist

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Located 12 miles south of Rio Grande City, MexicoÕs Sugar Lake spans about 28,000 acres of brush cluttered water where the fish grow fat and mean.

Charlie Haralson and Speedy Collett have never been much for horror flicks or rollercoaster rides. They find their excitement in the form of bruising largemouth bass.

So when the veteran Lake Falcon fishing guides get the itch for a little something on the wild side, they make a short dash across the Texas-Mexico border to a heavenly body of water Mexican natives refer to as Presa el Azucar.

Americans call the reservoir Sugar Lake, though something like the Land of the Giants or JurBassic Park seems more fitting.

"It is one of those lakes where you truly never know what the next cast will bring," Collett said. "You could catch a 12-pounder or you could hook into a giant you can't begin to turn. I guess you could say Sugar Lake is where Charlie and I go when we really want a treat. I still get butterflies every time I go."

Located in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, Sugar Lake is one of the oldest horses in a large stable of reservoirs that have helped make Mexico a popular destination among adventurous anglers obsessed by the country's big bass lore. The lake is so old, in fact, that its existence has been largely overshowed in recent times by all the media hype cast on younger lunker lakes like El Salto, Huites and Mateos along with the rebirth of famous workhorses like Lakes Baccarac, Comedero and Guerrero.

Located about 12 miles south of Rio Grande City, Sugar Lake has grabbed a few headlines of its own through the years. Still, the impoundment has somehow avoided the widespread exposure adventuresome writers and film crews can bring.

In the meantime, the Florida bass population that thrives there has quietly grown fatter and meaner, while at the same time remaining so uneducated to the sting of artificial lures that anyone who can hit the water with a bait is just about guaranteed to get bit when the fish are in the mood to play.

Most anglers learn pretty quick that all bets are off once they set the hook, though. Sugar Lake bass fight with the vigor of a gorilla and the tenacity of pit bull. Latch on to a thick-shouldered 4-pounder, and you'll swear it's a 10. Hook a 12-pounder and visions of a Mack truck or freight train come to mind.

"I have fished a lot of great lakes, and I have yet to see a place where the bass fight as hard as they do at Sugar Lake," Haralson said. "At times it can be more like self-defense than it is bass fishing. When the game is on, all you can do is hang on and hope for the best."

Such was the case last October, when Shane Hale of Nacogdoches and I made the trip to Sugar Lake with Collett as our guide. Having visited the lake once before, I had a pretty good idea of what to expect. Hale didn't. It was his first bass fishing trip south of the border.

Not surprisingly, he walked away with a newfound respect for the fighting abililty of Sugar Lake's spice.

"I had the best bass fishing day of my life," Hale said. "I have never seen anything like it. Those fish down there must be born as 3-pounders."

Together, the three of us landed more than a 100 bass in about seven hours fishing. Only a handful weighed less than 3 pounds. Most of the fish were in the 4- to 6-pound range, along with several weighing over 7 pounds. For professional fishing fans, our heaviest five bass weighed slightly more than 38 pounds -- a hall-of-fame day at most pro tournaments.

And yet that bell-ringing performance for most lakes left Collett scratching his head in disappointment as we left Sugar.

"I don't consider it to be a good day on Sugar unless we break the 40-pound mark," Collett said. "It happens all the time."

He knows all too well the big bass potential of the remote Mexican impoundment. Collett has experienced big bass nirvana at Sugar more than once.

His best trip came two years ago.

He was on a guide trip when the bite had been particularly good all morning long. Collett's client was worn out after catching a 10-pounder and several other bass in the 6- to 8-pound range. The angler was so amazed by the experience that he challenged Collett to see just how big of a bag he could catch.

What followed was the most awesome display of crankbait fishing that either man has witnessed. Collett lost count of the number of bass he caught before noon, but he remembers the total weight of the heaviest five (51 pounds) almost as well as he remembers the giant that got away.

"That fish grabbed my DD-22 and pulled so hard that it actually dragged my 21-foot bass boat around for a few seconds before it straightened the hooks out," Collett said. "Probably 10 casts later into the same spot, I caught a 12-pounder."

Haralson busted the 50-pound mark with five fish in August when he milked three underwater points for 53 pounds of largemouths in a single day. He used deep crankbaits and football jigs, and his heaviest bass weighed nearly 13 pounds. Remarkably, he returned to the same areas the following day and filled another 46-pound sack.

"That's just the way Sugar Lake is, especially during the summer and fall," Haralson said. "Those big fish will stack up on those underwater points, ledges and humps. It sounds crazy, but I've seen times when you can catch them on every throw."

Constructed in the 1940s by German engineers working under the direction of Adolph Hitler, Sugar Lake closely resembles Texas' Lake Fork in both shape and size. The reservoir is fed by three rivers -- the San Juan, Los Alamos and San Antonio. It stretches north to south and at full pool maintains a maximum depth of around 45 feet, despite the accumulation of more than half a century's worth of siltation. Water clarity is slightly stained to turbid.

Like most Mexican lakes, Sugar Lake has a deep history of topsy-turvy fishing cycles. The ebbs and flows are caused primarily by unstable water levels that result from farmland irrigation for fruit and vegetables and electricity demands.

Naturally, low water levels result if more water is going out than coming in. When water levels get extremely low and stay there for prolonged periods, fishing quality tends to decline. However, as many Mexican lakes have proven in the past, all it takes is a significant rise in water level to make a bass fishery bounce right back.

Sugar Lake is currently riding one of those upward trends. The resurrection was sparked a few years ago by a series of tropical depressions that dumped some badly needed rain on the region and caused the lake to swell to 115 percent capacity.

According to Collett, the radical rise came after nearly a decade-long drought that had caused the lake to shrink to about 35 percent of its normal size. During that drought, thousands of acres of shoreline grew up thick with cover -- huisache, retama, mesquite and willow bushes, some reaching as high as 25 feet.

Then came the sudden rise of water, which covered places that hadn't been underwater in years. That caused a release of rich nutrients that benefitted all forms of aquatic life, and seemingly overnight, Sugar Lake made the transformation from a being a tired water hole to a vibrant reservoir ripe with terrestrial vegetation at all the right depths for good bass fishing.

"It was essentially like a brand new lake all over again," Collett said. "The bass fishery and the forage base have been growing exponentially ever since."

Location is another factor that benefits the fishery.

The lake is far enough south that the water temperatures seldom dip below 55 degrees. The bass have been known to lock on spawning beds as early as Christmas, but the bulk of the spawning activity generally occurs between February and April.

Haralson says the water rarely gets clear enough to sight fish. But that may not be a bad thing.

"It's sort of scary to imagine what you might see if it were clear enough," he said. "I have hooked some fish during spring that were so strong I actually questioned if they were bass or not after they pulled loose. There are some monsters down there."

Matt Williams' e-mail address is mattwilliams@netdot.com.

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