DANNY SMITH/COURTESY WITH A TOTAL WEIGHT of 31.1 pounds, Paul Ferguson and Eric Thompson won the Fishers of Men tournament on Lake Palestine. The lake is again once of the best bass fishing lakes in East Texas.

Having toured with both B.A.S.S. and FLW, Whitehouse fisherman Paul Ferguson has been on some of the best bass lakes in the country. So when he says Lake Palestine is currently one of the top fishing lakes not in East Texas or Texas, but anywhere, you have to pay attention.

“I have fished all around the country and I think Palestine is fishing right now as good as anywhere I have been,” said Ferguson.

The fisherman and his partner, Eric Thompson, are coming off a recent Fishers of Men tournament in which they won with a five-fish, 30.1-pound stringer. And it wasn’t a runaway win. Joey and Pam Ridgle of Brownsboro were second with 29.49 and Keven Hatcher and Patrick Fuller of Flint claimed third with 27.68.

The tournament feature three bass over 10 pounds, a 12.11 big fish caught by Tyler’s Gary McDonald, a 11.95 caught by Pam Ridgle and a 10.23 caught by Hatcher.

Compared to those big bass Ferguson and Thompson played small fish in the tournament, bringing an 8.5, a 7, two over 6 and a 5 to the weigh-in.

“We probably caught 50 that day. We caught tons of 4-pound fish and culled through them in a hurry. We had 20 pounds in the first 15 minutes,” said Ferguson, added the duo caught all their fish on a homemade Chatterbait-type lure with a V&M Thunder Shad trailer.

“When we pulled up and started catching, I knew it was going to be a special day,” Ferguson said.

Palestine has produced some other 30-pound winning stringers in recent years, but maybe never this top-to-bottom quality.

“I have been running FOM tournaments for 11 years and we’ve never come close to this weight. We had a 31-pound stringer weighed in last year on Palestine, but second was 20 pounds. Palestine has been our top lake for the last three to four years,” said tournament director Danny Smith.

For this tournament Ferguson and Thompson were targeting bass in shallow water.

“I think they were up spawning, but we couldn’t see them because of the water visibility,” Ferguson said.

All of their fish came on the north end on tournament day, but Ferguson said he knows some of the other top weights came from near the dam.

“I practiced two days before the tournament and could have caught 30 pounds both days all over the lake,” he said.

There is a division between north and south ends. Ferguson said fishermen aren’t going to catch as many fish in the southern portion of the lake, but the ones they catch are likely to be good fish.

Probably the best bass lake in Texas in its early pre-Florida bass days, Palestine’s quality and quantity declined tremendously beginning in the 1980s and 90s. The lake has been going through something of a rebirth in recent years.

Lacking, however, has been consistency. Bass fishermen would have great springs, but the catch would collapse in the summer.

Ferguson thinks those days might be in the past.

“I fished there last summer, and the fishing was really good then,” he said.

The fishermen thinks the rejuvenation is part of a natural cycle that can occur as the fish learn to adapt to an older lake that doesn’t have the timber and cover it once had. It does not hurt that fishermen and fishing electronics are so much better, helping them to locate and catch the fish.

Nature has also helped, and it got a nudge from Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s stocking program.

“I think several things are going on. First of all we have had two significant drought/flood cycles in the past 10 years. This means that there was substantial growth of terrestrial vegetation during the drought followed by high water inundation. This in itself was very good for natural reproduction and year-class strength in the flood years,” said Richard Ott, TPWD Fisheries district biologist for the lake.

Ott added that the lake received major Florida-strain bass stockings in 2008-09 and again from 2012 through 2015. In all, the lake received more than 2 million fingerlings during that period on top of another 1.2 million stocked in 2004-05.

Ott said surveys have shown during drought years the naturally produced fish and Florida fingerlings had high survival because of reduced predation. They also showed unusually rapid growth rate.

No one knows how long the high will last, but with lake levels on more of a yo-yo these days because of drought and demand for water, there is a chance that this is more the beginning than the end.

Have a comment or opinion on this story? Contact outdoor writer Steve Knight by email at outdoor@tylerpaper.com. Follow Steve Knight on Facebook at Texas All Outdoors and on Twitter @txalloutdoors.