I fished a morning “Kids Fish, Too!” trip today with Hannah (10 years old) and Logan J. (6 years old) and their mom and dad, Earl and Kristi, all from Claremore, Oklahoma. They were down visiting family and decided to make a family fishing trip part of their summer.

From L to R: Hannah, Earl, Kristi, and Logan with a nice string of white bass.

Hannah’s 15 1/8 inch white bass earned her a Texas Parks and Wildlife Big Fish Award!!

As always in the summer when the winds are manageable, I did a short listening stop looking for the possibility of some topwater action. Lately, only 1 in 4 or 5 trips has offered any topwater, and we found none today.

So, we headed to open water and used sonar to identify several areas holding both baitfish and gamefish, and began to put together a downrigging regimen that worked.

As the summer goes on, the baitfish grow — as a result, I tend to use larger and larger baits as the warmwater season progresses. Today was the first trip of the season in which the White Willow (a mid-sized presentation that I make myself) outperformed the smallest Pet Spoon.

Our first success came along a circuit extending from Area 196 through Areas 39 and 41 to Area 40. The kids got the lines stripped out to the correct distance behind the boat and set the lines to the correct depth (23-24 foot worked well today) and we went to work. We put 4 whites in the boat right off the bat, then, Hannah’s rod went up indicating that a larger fish had struck her presentation and snatched the line out of the release clip under its own power. We brought the fish to net and found it was a big white bass measuring 15 1/8 inches, thus earning her a TPWD Big Fish certificate for eclipsing the 15 inch mark on that species.

We continued working over this area for 6 more fish and gradually ran out of fish in this location.

I brought some baitfish to put on downlines for largemouth, but found no largemouth on some of the traditional structures they hang around this time of year and so decided to look elsewhere when, lo and behold, Logan announced that nature was calling. So, we headed back to civilization and I rigged up some quill floats while waiting on shore and had the kids all ready to do some sunfishing at Area 239 when they returned to the boat. Both kids did well at observing the float and had good hook-set timing, thus allowing them to boat 7 sunfish in under 15 minutes.

Well, little Logan got tired of that pretty quickly and by now Hannah had those hard-pulling white bass in her blood, so, we returned to the main lake and gave downrigging another try. This time we hit a circuit from Area 457 to 458 as the wind was coming in on this feature real well. We boated 8 more fish here and missed a jumping largemouth. Logan earned the nickname “Little Drummer Boy” as he landed not one, but three drum, the last two coming as a double (2 fish caught at the same time on the same rod) as one drum inhaled a Lunker Licker, and a schoolmate went for the Pet Spoon trailing behind.

By 10:30 the action softened very quickly. I did spot a tight school of white bass at a breakline going from 20 to 27 feet and buoyed them, but, when we set up over them using bladebaits, we only got one follow in 10+ minutes of effort. Things got really quiet after this and it was apparent the morning feed was done.

As we arrived back at dockside, young Logan took great pleasure in releasing my bait fish back into the wilderness.

This was just a great trip with a great family — we enjoyed one another’s company and some good Texas summertime fishing while it lasted.

TALLY = 27 FISH, all caught and released

Today’s Conditions:

Start Time: 6:30a

End Time: 10:35a

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

Water Surface Temp: ~85.6F

Wind: Winds were S at 6 before sunup and increased to S10-12 by trip’s end.

Skies: Skies were clear and dry.