Fishing Lake Ray Hubbard from the bank, and where to eat after
The best all-around fishery in the Metroplex, per Texas Parks and Wildlife, is 18 miles from downtown with a free ramp and free bank access at Paul Jones Park. Blue catfish, hybrids, white bass, and crappie all year. A guest guide from Smells Like Fish, ending at the three Garland tables on the way home.
Eighteen miles from downtown there is a 21,671-acre reservoir that Texas Parks and Wildlife calls “probably the best all-around fishery in the Metroplex,” and the best public access to it is a City of Garland park with a free four-lane ramp, free bank fishing, and parking for fifty. Lake Ray Hubbard is rated Excellent for catfish and hybrid striped bass and Good for largemouth, crappie, and white bass, it fishes twelve months a year, and the standing timber above I-30 is where the fish live. This is the fishing half of a day out here. The eating half is at the end, in Garland, on the road home.
I write the guides on Smells Like Fish, a bait and tackle site, and I am a guest here. Top of Dallas asked for the water. They supplied the tables.
The day, in order
Leave downtown in the dark and take I-30 east. Be on the rocks at Paul Jones Park by first light with a slab spoon on one rod for the hybrids and white bass that school on the points early, and cut shad on the bottom on the other for the blue catfish that eat all day. Fish until the sun is high, then drive ten minutes back into Garland for lunch. If you want an afternoon, White Rock Lake is on the road home, nine miles from downtown, with eight fishing piers and the highest crappie catch rate of any lake in the Metroplex per TPWD. Dinner is back in Garland, 18 miles out, before the drive home.
What is in the water
Blue catfish are the reason this is a catfish site’s kind of lake. TPWD rates Ray Hubbard Excellent for catfish, and its urban-fishing page notes that nearby Lewisville has sampled blues to 46 pounds. Lake Tawakoni, an hour further east, is the Catfish Capital of Texas by act of the Legislature, and Lake Texoma on the Oklahoma line produced the 121.5-pound state record in 2004. On Ray Hubbard the limit is the statewide 25 blues and channels a day with ten of them 20 inches or longer; Tawakoni, Lewisville, and Lavon carry a trophy rule that allows only five over 20 inches and one over 30.
Hybrid striped bass, also rated Excellent, hold on “humps and points that extend into the lake,” per TPWD, and the heated discharge on the west side south of I-30 is good water for every sportfish in the lake. White bass and crappie stack on submerged brush in the lower lake in summer. Largemouth sit around vegetation and along the riprap, which is the water you are standing on at Paul Jones Park.
The rest of the year: from late November to early March the state stocks rainbow trout into Dallas-Fort Worth city ponds, about 44,700 of them last season, including 1,500 into Kidd Springs in Oak Cliff three miles from downtown and 3,160 into Mesquite City Lake. And Cedar Hill State Park on Joe Pool Lake, 20 miles southwest, has two lighted fishing jetties, a kids’ perch pond, and no licence requirement from shore or pier.
Where to fish from shore
- Paul Jones Park, Garland, 18 miles: free four-lane ramp, bank fishing along the riprap, parking for 50, open year-round.
- White Rock Lake, 9 miles: eight fishing piers, five free city ramps, bank fishing allowed, wading not, 10.5-horsepower motor limit.
- Kidd Springs Park, Oak Cliff, 3 miles: a spring-fed city pond that gets 1,500 rainbow trout each winter.
- Cedar Hill State Park, Joe Pool Lake, 20 miles: two lighted jetties, a perch pond, $7 entry, no licence needed.
- Lake Tawakoni State Park, 59 miles: trophy blue catfish water, loaner gear, kid pond, $5 entry, no licence from shore.
- Eisenhower State Park, Lake Texoma, 80 miles: a lighted fishing pier, stripers, $5 entry, no licence from shore.
Licences, fees, and the rule that saves Dallas families money
Anyone 17 or older needs a Texas licence. The one-day all-water licence is $11 for a resident and $16 for a nonresident, needs no endorsement, and is sold online through the Texas License Connection with a $5 fee or at about 1,700 stores. An annual resident freshwater package is $30. The rule that saves money is the state-park exemption: TPWD says “a fishing license and endorsement are not required if fishing on state park property,” which covers Cedar Hill, Lake Tawakoni, and Eisenhower. From a park pier it is pole-and-line only, two poles per person, and the bag limits still apply. Under 17 fishes free everywhere. Fishing Texoma across the Oklahoma line takes the $12 Lake Texoma licence, good through December 31.
The gear side
Which slab spoon for hybrids off the points, how to cut a shad so it stays on a circle hook, which stink bait for summer channel cats and which cut bait for winter blues: that is my beat, and it does not belong on a restaurant site. The full Dallas fishing guide on Smells Like Fish has the map of all 13 spots with drive times from downtown, live river flows, every fee, the licence links, the ramp table, the special catfish limits lake by lake, and the tackle list.
Where to eat after
Paul Jones Park is inside the Garland city limits, so the road home runs through it. These three are on the Top of Dallas Garland list. The scores are theirs, not mine.
Sources. Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, Lake Ray Hubbard water and access pages, the Urban Fishing in Dallas-Fort Worth page, Lake Tawakoni, Lewisville, Lavon, and Texoma regulations, Cedar Hill, Lake Tawakoni, and Eisenhower state park pages, fishing licences and packages, free fishing opportunities, and the 2025-26 rainbow trout stocking schedule; City of West Tawakoni on the 2001 Catfish Capital designation. Drive distances computed on OpenStreetMap roads from downtown Dallas.
Ray Dodson writes for Smells Like Fish. Ray is the pen name of that site's research desk: every recommendation is built from documented angler consensus, state fish and wildlife guidance, and published testing, with sources named in every article. This piece was written for Top of Dallas.
