Surveying the lakes of Central Texas
Summary
In January 2024, the best lakes in central texas to take my boat an Nimble Artic 26 with a 18" draft on a 30' tandem trailer to launch are :
- Lake LBJ at the Lake LBJ Marina
- Inks Lake
- Lake Marble Falls at Cottonwood creek
- Lake George Town at either Park
The Trip around Central Texas, north of Austin, south of Walburg
On Saturday December's January 7th 2024 myself and Mr Werner Nagy traveled around central Texas checking boat ramps.Cottonwood Shores Park
Since I live in Austin Texas we traveled West to Lake marble falls to check the boat ramp at cottonwood shores.
The boat ramp and cottonwood shores is in a small Park there are six boat trailer parking spaces along with two handicapped parking spaces there is a rack of loaner life vests.
The ramp is good the end of the ramp is at least 30 ft from the water level.
Lake LBJ Marina
We drove further west to the lake LBJ Marina and Yacht club by the Wertz dam. This is a nice facility. There's a store. the restaurant is closed and the owner told us that he was unlikely to open a restaurant this year. The ramp is fabulous. It declines into the lake at angle about 10° and appears to go deep enough to launch Bagatelle. There is a nice dock by the ramp. there's a $10 launch fee. This fee has remained the same for the past 10 years.
Lake LBJ Marina website
Ink's Lake State Park
From lake LBJ we drove back east to highway 281 through Marble Falls North to the turnoff at County Road 2342 for Inks lake. Inks lake is a constant level lake just like lake LBJ the ramp at inks lake is in the State Park so we to pay to go in. The Day use fee is $5 for up to four people. The ramp here is fabulous because the lake is constant level. The ramp is well watered. it's at least 50 ft of ramp beneath the waterway. there is a restroom and there's a store it's a very nice state park.
Lunch in Burnet
From inks lake we drove into Burnet to have lunch. We lunched at Highlander House of Buffet & Steakhouse. The the buffet was well laid out it was full of very good food I had chicken spinach and stewed tomatoes and okra along with salad.
Werner had the fried steak and he had a pie. He was very good the price was $16 a person
Lake Buchannan
From Burnett we drove back out to lake Buchanan to Black Rock Park to see that the ramp is about 100 ft from the water there's a little Forest growing at the base of the ramp as it had done and back in 2013 the last time I visited when the lake was down. This is different from when I visited in 2019 when the ramp was still wet.
We spoke with the attendant at the LCRA Park next store and she said that there is a ramp near the dam that is still wet but we didn't go to investigate.
Lake Georgetown Texas Russell Park
From Lake Buchanan we drove back into Burnet bought gas and drove out to lake Georgetown.
We drove to Russell Park on the north side of the lake and found that there's a $5 fee to enter the park.
There's a 30° ramp and it was well watered but the lake is considerably down from its full well below the lowest level of the floating dock.
I spoke to a fellow who had just pulled out a 20 foot runabout. He said his trailer had not fallen off the end of the ramp.
There is a restroom near the ramp.
There appears to be plenty of ramp to launch Bagatelle.
Willis Creek Park on Granger Lake
From Russell Park we drove out to Granger Lake the park on the west side of the lake. We came to find a nice park. A nice ramp leading into a very shallow Lake there were logs laying in the water. They were not floating but sitting on the bottom near the ramp. I spoke to a paddle boarder who said it was great for paddleboarding but the water was awfully shallow.
There is a floating pier near the ramp we went out to the pier stuck a stick in the water to find that at that point the lake is just 3 ft deep.
