Of Sleeping Dogs and “Oldness”; 64 Fish, Stillhouse, 16 March 2010






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.








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