Wow! What a morning of fishing we had! Every so often all of the variables just line up right and you have one of those days you remember for a long time. Today was one of those days.

From L to R — Mark, Terry (with 19.50 inch hybrid), and Matthew W.

After culling all morning, these were our best 6 white bass, all over 13.25 inches.

The first variable was people. I had a very enjoyable trio on board today, Terry W. and his two adult sons, Mark and Matthew. These fellows got along well and enjoyed one anothers’ company, they were personable, they appreciated being coached and they really listened to and applied the guidance I gave them. They remained enthusiastic the entire time and, as a result, they stayed focused so their technique stayed consistent and productive. All three had done a good bit of fishing, could cast well, quickly grasped the techniques necessary to consistently put fish in the boat, avoided tangles and snags, took most of their own fish off the hook, etc. These things all added up to allow us to maximize potential as the fish cooperated.

The second variable was weather. We’ve had stable weather for 1 week now (typically unheard of in the springtime in Texas) with good southerly winds and cloud cover. This cloud cover has masked the full moon, thus putting feeding periods into the daylight hours.

The third variable is temperature. Fish are cold-blooded, and their metabolism increases and decreases with the water temperature. Right now the water is steadily warming and today was in the low 60’s. That means that the fishes’ caloric requirements are also increasing and frequent, hard feeding is becoming more and more common.

The fourth variable is birds. The presence of birds is icing on the cake. Birds can help you make a shortcut to active fish by providing a visual cue as to where the fish are. Otherwise, searching multiple areas with sonar is the fall-back option, and it is slow and tedious, even with state of the art sonar on board.

We launched at 7:09, first wet a line at 7:15, found active fish by 7:32 and never got out of actively feeding fish by moving from place to place until right at 11:45 when the bird action died as the skies cleared and brightened and the winds approached 20mph.

We caught a mix of white bass and hybrid striped bass today, with one token largemouth thrown in for good measure with another one lost at boatside. The fish were simply on an extended feeding binge today — I’d hate to be a threadfin shad on days like today because those poor rascals didn’t get a breather. We landed multiple 13-14 inch long white bass, and our longest hybrid went 19.50 inches. We sight-cast to boiling fish when we could, and used a smoking tactic when fish left the surface and sonar revealed their presence beneath us; the fish never really slowed down to the point where grinding it out by jigging the slab was necessary. A 3/4 oz. white TNT 180 slab did the trick today taking 95% of our catch.

In the order it occurred, we found action at Areas 574, 748, 592, 749, 750, NW of 593 (40′), and 579

For our efforts, we we rewarded with 157 fish boated in 4.5 hours of fishing.

TALLY = 157 FISH, all caught and released

CONDITIONS:

Start Time: 7:15a

End Time: 11:45a

Air Temp: 66F at trip’s start.

Water Surface Temp: ~62.5F

Wind: Winds were SSE9 at obscured sunrise and increased steadily to SSE18+ by trip’s end.

Skies: Skies were mostly cloudy at 90-100% all morning, with clearing beginning as our trip concluded.