This afternoon I welcomed aboard mother and daughter Gladys and Deb N. Gladys is a long-time local resident, and Deb was in town from Ennis, TX, visiting her folks. Dad (Charles) decided to treat the ladies to a fishing trip.

Deb holds the first of several fish she caught exceeding the 5 pound mark this afternoon.

Not to be outdone, Gladys came up with her own lunker — a 6 1/8 pound largemouth. This fish looked like it had been around a long time judging from the appearance of its eyes and wear and tear on its fins and lower jaw.

Today’s trip started and ended with a bang, but we had a bit of a lull in the middle. While I was waiting for my guests to arrive, I checked over a few areas with sonar and was fortunate to pin down what would turn out to be a school of hybrid near Area 817 on a breakline going from 25 to 31 feet. The fish were at the deeper end of the breakline (which often means relative inactivity). I marked these fish, picked the ladies up, and returned to fish for what I’d seen earlier on sonar.

When we positioned over these fish, they’d moved upslope a bit (a positive sign). Instead of opting for bait, I had the ladies smoke 3/8 and 3/4 oz. TNT 180 slabs over these fish. Deb drew blood first boating a keeper hybrid on a 3/8 oz. slab. Seeing now that we were dealing with hybrid, I changed the ladies over to 3/4 oz. slabs, and, once again, Deb hooked up. After going for a while without a strike on the artificials, I then decided to go with bait and the sluggish fish reacted well to the presentation. We boated 10 more fish including 2 short hybrid, 1 channel cat, 1 largemouth bass, and 6 keeper hybrid. After about 75 minutes on these fish, they turned off and we went on an unsuccessful search for fish elsewhere, save one white bass taken on a shad at Area 437.

Around 7:30, I decided to have another look at Area 817. As I motored in, there the fish were appearing just as they did when I first found them prior to our 4:30pm start time. This time we went with live bait as our first option and that turned out to be a good choice. Over the next 90 minutes we baited only 4 rods due to the size of the fish we were catching making tangled lines a probability due the hybrids’ propensity to run horizontally through the water column. During this window of time we boated 15 more fish including a 6.125 pound largemouth for Gladys, 2 short hybrid, and 13 keeper hybrid. The fish bit right up to the cover of darkness and then knocked off.

TALLY = 28 FISH, all caught and released

TODAY’S CONDITIONS:

Start Time: 4:30p

End Time: 9:10p

Air Temp: 93F at trip’s start.

Water Surface Temp: ~82.8F

Wind: Winds were SSE 9-12 the entire trip.

Skies: Skies were clear, bright, and dry.

I fished with father and son team Jack and John B. of Belton this morning. Jack is a retired U.S. Army Armor officer now working in the private sector, and John is just starting his Army career as a second lieutenant in the Military Police, stationed at Ft. Polk, Louisiana.

Jack’s best fish of the day came on a downrigged White Willow within minutes of switching over from a slow live bait bite to a more aggressive controlled depth trolling approach

John holds the one keeper hybrid we boated on live bait on this trip.

Jack’s wife gave him a fishing gift certificate for Christmas and today was “cash it in day”.

Jack lives near Belton Lake, fishes regularly from shore and had done well this Spring on white bass and hybrid striper when they were easily caught from shore during the shad spawn as these gamefish pursued the bait within casting distance from the shore. He and I had been in touch a number of times since Christmas and agreed that a trip focusing on post-spawn hybrid using live shad would be a helpful lesson for Jack so as to give him some pointers on deeper water tactics.

We started the day netting shad and began looking for fish by around 7am. We spotted some “nomadic” white bass feeding on the surface in open water on newly hatched shad, threw Cork Rigs for them, and boated two right away before the action waned as the sky brightened.

We then searched with sonar and found fish scattered along the midpoint of the breakline at Area 816. We got baits down and did a bit of chumming. The action we experienced was moderate but steady, but just not for hybrid striper. We boated 15 fish on bait here only 1 of which was a keeper hybrid. Additionally, we caught 1 longnose gar, 5 nice channel cat, 7 white bass, and 1 short hybrid. As we remained stationary with our bait-set out, I noted roving schools of white bass passing beneath us. Before we moved on to try elsewhere for hybrid, I suggested we give downrigging a try, as that was yet another technique Jack had expressed interest in before our trip.

We rigged up with White Willow spoons behind the ‘rigger balls and immediately got into fish between Areas 691 and 437 in 19-26 feet of water. Within 30 minutes’ time we boated 7 more fish including our largest hybrid of the trip, as well as a short hybrid, and 5 white bass of various sizes.

As we downrigged, the little wind we had went slack and the skies brightened intensely. We struggled to find active fish, checking many areas without so much as a school of shad showing on sonar, much less gamefish pursuing them.

Finally, around 11:35, a SSE breeze began and quickly ramped up to a manageable velocity. The fish responded almost immediately to this change. We began to pick up bait and gamefish on sonar at Area 815. We positioned, got bait and chum in the water, and began pulling fish immediately. Over a 2 hour span here we boated 31 fish including 1 smallmouth, 1 largemouth, and a mix of 29 whites and short hybrid. As the waves just began to whitecap the action peaked and it was all we could do to keep 4 of our 6 rods baited and in the water. Some of this was due in part to the fact that the fish (especially the short hybrid) were taking the baits so hard and deep that I had to cut off hooks and retie multiple times. In the last 30 minutes on this area the action began to wane. I used artificials in and around our bait spread to try to draw nearby fish in. It was in this way that I gave Jack and John the briefest of introductions to “blasting” and “smoking”. Both techniques accounted for a few fish, but, by and large, the feed was now over. By 1:30 the fish were done altogether and we headed in after our 8 hour “half day” trip.

TALLY = 57 FISH, all caught and released

TODAY’S CONDITIONS:

Start Time: 7:00a

End Time: 1:45p

Air Temp: 73F at trip’s start.

Water Surface Temp: ~82.0F

Wind: Winds were light at 3-4 SSE until 11:35.

Skies: Skies were clear, bright, and dry.