I fished a solo scouting trip this morning trying to nail down some decent topwater locations for upcoming trips. The topwater has really been inconsistent, but, then again, so has the weather. The nice high pressure dome that usually sets up over us for a majority of the summer bringing with it very stable, predictable weather conditions just hasn’t taken hold yet.

I was pleased to find solid topwater action kicking off at exactly 7:05 and slowly tapering to a close by 9:15. The action came and went in spurts, but never stopped during this time span. In and around Area 061 I boated 16 fish in a 70/30 largemouth/white bass mix. All fish came on the Cork Rig and all casts had to be fast and accurate to produce.

Once this action ended, I went to take a look at Area 646-647. There has been a consistent south wind blowing into this area, and I’ve seen abundant bait showing on sonar as I’ve passed by on my way to search for topwater on several occasions now. I found abundant bait, in balls, and found gamefish strung along the 23-27 foot mark, all suspended in and around this bait. I got a single downrigger working and was immediately into fish, pulling 5 whites in no time. As I moved S. toward 647, a more dense schooling of fish was seen on sonar, and, given the topography of the bottom here, these fish were closer to the bottom while still being suspended at ~23-24 feet. I hovered with the trolling motor and cast with a bladebait for about 20 minutes, landing 7 solid white bass and missing 2 more, all on a lift-drop retrieve.

Once things got quiet, I made one last stop to run sonar and a downrigger over Area 056. I saw fish but not much bait in here and wound up only landing one juvenile white bass in over 20 minutes worth of effort.

I wrapped it up at that point, confident that Area 061 would eventually produce consistent topwater action once the weather settles in for the long summer.

TALLY = 29 FISH, all caught and released

Today’s Conditions:

Start Time: 6:15a

End Time: 10:20a

Air Temp: 77F at trip’s start, heading towards the high-90’s.

Water Surface Temp: ~85.2F

Wind: Winds were around 6SE at sunrise, then slowly turned SSW and built to around 12-14 by trip’s end.

Skies: Skies were hazy and with about 30% cloud over, with the typical low cloud bank in the E around sunrise.