This evening I fished with a retired couple from the San Antonio area, The Rowland’s. Both Gary and Linda are U.S. military veterans. They had some other Spring Break travel plans fall through and wanted to spend some time in the outdoors so they gave me a ring and we made a nice evening of it. Both had some fishing experience, mostly from the bank, and the experiences they had fishing from boats was in very different environments (downrigging in the Pacific and fishing from a drift boat in the Northwest), so, we spent a good bit of time at dockside before launching just getting some basic techniques down, such as jigging and smoking with a slab.

Gary and Linda “grip and grin” at their catch of healthy white bass taken on slabs this evening.

High winds were a factor today, with sustained winds over 16 mph and gusts over 20 making boat control a bit of an issue, but we took lemons and made some lemonade.

Our first stop came at Area 546. I saw some so-so sonar readings on bottom near a breakline topping out at 25 feet. We stopped and put our dockside lessons to use and just worked out the kinks here. We managed to boat 4 smallish white bass, but, this was very useful as both now appreciated what a bite felt like, how to adjust the height of their lure, how to maintain a vertical orientation for line control, and more — all fundamental to success.

We moved on after the few fish in this area lost interest in our presentations and again connected with fish in the vicinity of Areas 103 and 549. This breakline adjacent to the channel has really turned on recently and produced consistently. Fish were initially hugging bottom, but, as the evening progressed, rose higher in the water column. I suspect that due to the low flow in the Lampasas that there was actually some mid-depth, open water spawning action occuring here, as several females were dripping eggs and many males were leaking milt. We spent the majority of our 4 hour trip here on these fish, working them over with 3/8 oz. white TNT 180’s, boating a total of 38 from an area perhaps 25 yards in diameter. Once we lost contact with fish, we’d move in the same vicinity closely studying sonar until I reestablished contact with bottom-hugging fish, we then jig for these fish, catch a few, and the process would repeat. This area stop yielding fish around 7:00pm.

We check out a shallow water area to no avail, and then spent the last 25 minutes of the trip or so flatlining with a Wart/Rip Shad combination near Area 116. We actually boated 4 fish, but had several hooked that managed to struggle free despite our attempts to baby them in using the whippy crankbait rods I have dedicated for this trolling duty.

In all we put 42 fish in the boat this evening.

Gary sent me a nice note after the trip letting me know that Linda didn’t stop talking about their experience for a day and a half following our outing, and that he was appreciative of the good referral I gave him to Schoepf’s BBQ over in Belton.

TALLY = 42 FISH, all caught and released

Today’s Conditions:

Start Time: 3:45p

End Time: 8:10p

Starting Air Temp: 79F

Water Surface Temp: 62.4F

Wind: S16-18 at trip’s start with higher gusts decreasing to S12 by trip’s end

Skies: Partly cloudy at 205 coverage.

This morning I welcomed aboard Cody and Dylan C. of Nolanville, and Cody’s friend, Michael, also of Nolanville. The boys were treated to a fishing trip for Cody’s 16th birthday by Grandpa Dave D. of Hawaii. This was a reunion of sorts, as all three boys joined me for a Spring Break outing in 2009, as well.

The boys display the 6 largest white bass taken on our outing today; the largest went 14 1/8 inches.

We began the morning with a bit of flatline trolling along the circuit from Area 743 to Area 741, and picked up only 3 white bass with little else in the way of fish or bait showing on sonar.

We headed to troll the circuit from Area 713 to Area 733 and did better, boating 9 fish in as many passes until noting some surface action here (BA: 2 HG). We headed to the area of the disturbance and studied sonar, finding abundant white bass scattered along the bottom here in ~17′. We vertical jigged and smoked these fish, boating 19 in about 40 minutes’ time until they cooled off.

We then headed to troll the Area 114 to 703 to 319 circuit, and picked up two more, but action was slow there.

We made one last move to Area 744 where we smoked and jigged for the remainder of our fish (23 of them to be exact) in about 21′.

This was an ideal trip for kids as we never went for any lengthy spells without catching fish and were able to use several hands-on tactics to boat the fish we did.

Thank you, Grandpa Dave, for a nice Spring Break birthday treat!!

TALLY = 54 FISH

Today’s Conditions:

Start Time: 7:30a

End Time: 11:30a

Starting Air Temp: 60F

Water Surface Temp: 61.2F

Wind: S11-13

Skies: Overcast.

This morning’s Spring Break trip was spent in the company of (Grandma) Joyce W. and her grandsons, 11 year old C.J. and 8 year old Nate. This is the third year in a row they’ve spent a part of their Spring Break fishing with me. I was honored to rank right up there on the list with NASA daycamp and the Blue Bell Ice Cream factory tour!

C.J. with one of our two 14+ inch long white bass taken today.

Nate with a white bass he caught all by himself using his favorite method — casting!

As we got going today, I saw some action (BA: 5HG)located in an expanse of water from Area 741 to 742. I headed over to it and looked closely with sonar and saw multiple small schools (15-25 fish) of white bass in and around this area. Some were pushing shad all the way to the surface and the odor of shad being fed upon was strong here. We started off flatlining with Bone Warts and did very well, boating 18 white bass in a little over and hour’s time, including two that exceeded 14″. Once this settled down we continued the search.

We headed to Area 713 and found abundant white bass holding tight to the bottom. As is often the case when first probing a “fresh” school of fish, they got very aggressive to the point of responding to a smoking retrieve. We boated quite a number of fish here via “smoking” and straightforward jigging. The boys also experimented with casting blade baits worked in a lift-drop fashion, thus accessing fish beyond the area of bottom touched with our vertical presentation. At one point Nate reeled in a double that fell for the Hazy Eye Shad rig I’d placed above his bladebait. We departed this area with 55 fish boated.

Nate really enjoyed casting and would have done that the entire time, but, I explained to him that casting only works well when the fish are really active and excited and that when the fish slow down, we have to slow our presentations down, too. I try to make an analogy between the fishes’ brief feeding windows each day and how a household pet gets active and frisky for just short times each day, but otherwise spends its time sleeping or at least laying down and resting.

We wound up our day at Area 743 after my attention was drawn there by some surface activity (BA: 4HG). We checked this 15-18′ area out and found two congregations of fish near bottom here. We trolled over them to gauge their activity level and then jigged for them after taking two on flatlined crankbaits. We put a final 7 fish in the boat by jigging and, with Nate’s attention span beginning to wane, decided to call it a very good day at this point with 64 fish boated for our efforts.

Now, about “oldness”. Somehow we got on the topic of the tragedy of the earthquake in Japan and how so many people had lost their lives in that disaster. Nate volunteered that losing your life to an earthquake, tsunami, or whirlpool was not good. He then announced that he knew the best way to pass away. Well, Joyce and I were now waiting for the other shoe to drop and so I prompted him by asking what that best way was. His one word answer was “Oldness.” I had to think about that!

This was a good trip with good people.

TALLY = 64 FISH, all caught and released

Today’s Conditions:

Start Time: 7:30a

End Time: 11:50a

Starting Air Temp: 62F

Water Surface Temp: 60.8F

Wind: SSE10

Skies: Heavily overcast to the point of occasional light drizzle.