I fished a family trip this afternoon with my brother, Andy, and my nephew and neice, Trent and Molly, all new arrivals in the Austin area. We got on the water around 3pm facing tough conditions, including clear skies, bright sun, and light NNE wind. We started out looking in deep water at mid-lake, but saw no birds, no bait, no nothing.

Andy holds the largest of our white bass landed today.

Andy, Molly, and Trent all pitched in for good results under tough conditions.

Start Time: 3:00pm

End Time: 7:45pm

Start Temp: 71F

Water Surface Temp: 60F

Winds: Light from the NNE at 6, shifting ESE and then dying to near calm, and picking up at SE at 7 with increasing clouds near sunset

Skies: Skies were clear and cloudless until near sunset, when skies began to cloud, working toward a totally cloud covered sky by the following morning

We took a close look at things at Area 601, saw a few fish on bottom, and stopped to jig, but managed only one small white bass here.

We moved on to Area 603/604 and found fish both on top of the feature here, as well as off to the side in as little as 15 feet of water, and down to 24 feet of water. We vertical jigged for a mixed bag of solid white bass and barely-keeper whites and bagged a total of 33 fish here for the effort. Fish were also found on the sloping bottom just yards to the north of this feature.

We experienced a very sudden wind shift as we fished here, turning out of the ESE at just 8-9 mph for about 20 minutes, and then going slack. The fishing took a nosedive at that point, and we then struggled until about 45 minutes prior to sunset. During this slow time, we drifted with live bait near Area 54, but came up with only a pair of crappie for the effort.

Around 6:45pm, we headed to Area 352 and picked up one largemouth and 2 white bass here on a flatline. I didn’t see much in the way of bait or fish on sonar here so we dropped back to Area 116/407 and ran 4 flatlines, keeping the Bombers on the deep side and the Rip Shads on the shallow. This turned out to be a solid combination as we boated fish for 30 minutes straight and all points along this circuit.

We ended the day with 67 fish boated. Our success was enhanced by the fact that Andy, Trent, and Molly have all fished with me before and all have the “hang” of vertical jigging down pat. This allowed us to maximize the potential we had for landing fish at Area 603/4 and put a lot of fish in the boat even when conditions were difficult.

TALLY = 67 fish, all caught and released