Well, all good things must come to an end. The back-to-back 100 fish days didn’t continue on today as our high pressure broke down and that old SE wind kicked in and brought some cloud cover with it. I fished a half-day morning trip with Andy and Amy M. of Ft. Mitchell, KY, this morning. We had a great time with an abundance of topwater action — it just wasn’t as long or strong as over the past few days.

ANDY AND AMY WITH TWIN BLACK THEY CAUGHT ON SUB-SURFACE RETRIEVES OVER SCHOOLING FISH

Start Time: 6:15a

End Time: 10:45a

Air Temp: 68F at trip’s start.

Water Surface Temp: ~78.8F

Wind: Winds were from the SE at around 7 at the start of the trip, slowly ramping up to over 18 by trip’s end.

Skies: Skies were fair with some high, thin clouds to the E which the sun did not clear until around 9:15.

Things got off to a slow start this morning as the light level was diminished around sunrise by the thin clouds in the E. sky. By 7:00a some tentative surface feeding by white bass began to develop N. of Area 444 and slowly spread to Area 204. We fished over these fish with bladebaits slowly retrieved subsurface. By 7:30 we’d boated 10 fish and then spotted better action to our SE under a diving heron.

We got quickly over to just NW of Area 042 and found abundant white bass and black bass feeding on the surface. By now the surface had a fair chop on it, so the fish were getting quite “splashy”. Amy and I used Spook Jr.’s and Andy tried his hand with my flyrod using a Polished Chicken in #2 size. We all caught fish here in the 25 minutes or so that the action lasted, taking our tally up to 23 fish.

We headed back to the vicinity of Area 444 and found the action about as we had left it. Amy kept on with the bladebait while Andy and I gave Cork Rigs a try. Again, we all caught fish. At this point the sun finally cleared the thin clouds and the intensity of its heat could be felt on the skin for the first time. At the same time the skies brightened substantially. This caused an immediate spike in the surface activity and provided us with our most consistent portion of the trip. Over the next 35 minutes, we boated an additional 26 fish, consisting of a 40/60 mix of largemouth/white bass.

Around 9:25, the wind very suddenly increased in speed, and this seemed to put the lid on the fishing for the morning. I immediately went to downriggers, but even then only came up with one additional fish in this area where both bait and gamefish were just both active and abundant. Failing at that, we downrigged Area 452 to 453, and looked over Areas 250 and 251 with sonar, and found nothing at either location. We returned to Area 444 — nothing. We made one final check at Area 199 — nothing. Realizing this morning’s window was now shut hard, we called it a day with exactly 50 fish caught and released to fight another day.

TALLY = 50 FISH, all caught and released

Bob Maindelle, Owner, Holding The Line Guide Service and Kids Fish, Too! Stillhouse Hollow Fishing Guide, Belton Lake Fishing Guide, Lake Georgetown Fishing Guide, Walter E. Long (Decker) Lake Fishing Guide. Offering Salado Fishing, Killeen Fishing and Ft. Hood Fishing