This evening I fished with Nate R. of Academy, TX, and his three kids, Eliza, Ben, and Sam. Nate works at Scott & White hospital in Temple, TX, where several of his co-workers (some with kids of their own) had fished with me in the past and suggested he give me a try.
Eliza walked away with big fish honors tonight … a 6.25 pound largemouth which threw up a 9 inch white bass in mid-battle.
Little Sam held his own today with a channel cat caught during our “practice round”. It tipped the scales at 5.50 pounds.
Ben was steady as a rock … he had the best form and most consistency and caught the most fish independently today.
Nate’s kids all had very limited fishing experience prior to today’s trip, so, we started with the fundamentals … how to hold a rod, what the parts of the rod and reel are called, how to work a lure in a way attractive to the fish, and so on, so that when we encountered fish, we could maximize our potential. This would pay off later in the trip.
Before even leaving the boatramp area (Area 797), as we work on adjusting our lure height relative to bottom and on the proper jigging tactic, we got a “big bite” and Sam (the youngest sibling at 6 years old) was fast to a very large channel cat. As he cranked and cranked on the reel’s handle for all it was worth, the drag did its job and buffered any rookie mistakes that might have been made. In a few moments I slid the net under our first, and what I assumed would be our largest, fish of the trip … a 5.50 pound channel cat. Wow! What a start.
From there, we made our way to progressively deeper water finding a few fish suspended under birds in the vicinity of Area 1053. We ran downriggers staggered at 12 and 15 feet and boated 2 white bass and a short largemouth before the action died.
We then headed to the deepest water that we would fish this trip — 38 feet around Area 1042. We found schooled (but not heavily schooled) white bass on the downwind side of this bottom feature and hovered over them while working our TNT180 slab spoons. The older two kids, Eliza and Ben, did great once they got the hang of adjusting their lure depth in this “non-practice” scenario. Sam required a bit of help from me and dad, but, that’s what we were there for. In all, the kids boated 28 fish from this small patch of bottom including Eliza’s 6.25 pound largemouth shown above. As this fish first breached the surface, a partially digested 9 inch white bass was thrown from its mouth. Eliza’s hook held through that above-water headshake and she stayed pretty cool and eventually brought the fish to net for a quick photo and weigh-in on my certified scales.
As the time pushed near 7p, the light level decreased as the setting sun fell behind some clouds to the west. We headed back shallow and finished up doing some flatlining in the vicinity of Area 995, boating 2 final white bass for the evening.
TALLY = 35 fish, all caught and released.
TODAY’S CONDITIONS:
Start Time: 3:45p
End Time: 8:05p
Air Temp: 73F at trip’s start.
Water Surface Temp: 58.4F
Wind: Winds were SSE 6-8.
Skies: Skies were partly sunny to mostly cloudy.