Q: What do you get when you cross a Marine with a soccer coach? A: Hybrid!!






Today I had the pleasure of welcoming brothers-in-law Paul J. (the soccer coach) and Will G. (former marine and current Texas Housing Dept. employee) aboard.

Will landed the big one today, a 4.75 hybrid that fell for a downrigged shad imitator.

We had multiple doubles today wherein both fellows had fish on at the same time as the fish showed up on sonar in “wolfpacks” of 3-6 fish per group.

These were both young, athletic guys, and both just a wee bit competitive (I think one shoved the other out of the way to be the first one on the boat this morning!). I always enjoy having athletes on board as their coordination is always good and they are often used to listening (well) to coaching. Both of these pay off when the subtleties of any technique I teach are explained and then are able to be applied without a steep learning curve. Such was the case with Paul and Will. I showed them only a time or two how to rig a downrigger spread and they were doing it independently thereafter, leaving me to focus on sonar and taking fish off the hook, which, in the long run, resulted in more fish as I was able to concentrate on the important task of locating fish and staying with them.

We located 3 distinct concentrations of fish today, all of which were suspended at 23-29 feet over deeper bottoms. The downriggers were the key to success today as they kept our baits “in the zone”. We found fish pre-sunrise to about an hour afterwards between Areas 841 and 843. During the mid-morning we found fish between Areas 843 and 487. Then in the late morning we found fish between Areas 846 and 214. Over this course of time we stopped 4 times to jig for fish and got exactly ONE fish for the efforts. These fish are definitely into a horizontal movement. I witnessed very few “slabbers” doing much this morning, although live shad fishermen who understood that the fish were suspended and fished accordingly were catching some fish.

Our largest fish today was a nice 4.75 pound hybrid that Will boated. He also missed one that we were sure would have beat that one out. I should mention here that I believe I witnessed Paul do a silent fist-pump when that unfortunate event occurred (I told you these guys were competitive!).

I fished a little longer than I have been lately as the fish continued to bite well up to around 11am as the SSW wind picked up and helped us out a bit.

Our final tally was 56 fish, all caught and released, with 8 of these fish being keeper (18+ inch) hybrid, mixed with other short hybrid and white bass of all sizes.

TALLY = 56 FISH, all caught and released


TODAY’S CONDITIONS:

Start Time: 6:15a

End Time: 11:05a

Air Temp: 76F at trip’s start.

Water Surface Temp: ~85.2F

Wind: Winds were S7 at trip’s start, slowly turning SSW10.

Skies: Skies were fair, dry, and bright with high thin clouds until around 9:30am.