This morning I drove into Killeen to pick up sisters Patty and Melissa (Missy) L. for the first fishing trip of their lives!!

When I asked Patty what she thought of her first fishing trip she said, “It wasn’t as hard as I thought it was going to be.”.

When I asked Missy what she thought of her first fishing trip she said, “It was really fun.”.

This trip was paid for by a person from the girls’ church, Memorial Baptist Church, in Killeen. This person learned that the girls had never been fishing before, and wanted to give them that experience. The girls’ dad is raising them alone and is a hard-working fellow with no fishing experience of his own, so, that, coupled with the fact that the girls had no formal plans for Spring Break due to dad’s work schedule, looked like a match made in heaven.

Today’s weather was good fishing weather — dreary, grey, warm, and a bit breezy. We found our first batch of fish at Area 995 in about 15 feet of water. We cast bladebaits out horizontally and worked them back over fish we’d located in small groups via sonar after marking them with a buoy. We landed 23 fish here before the action tapered off.

Next, we headed to Area 054/602 where 4 terns were working and pointed the way to some very shallow white bass feeding very aggressively on shad. We used lighter bladebaits here and fished them higher in the water column to net 13 more fish.

We finished up flatline trolling with Reef Runner Ripshad 200’s to put 11 more fish in the boat before the morning bite died.

On the drive back to the girls’ home, I got to enjoy a few tales about what each sister does that gets on the others’ nerves, about where they like to go out to eat when they get the chance, and a bonus tale about dad’s cooking abilities.

TALLY = 47 fish, all caught and released.

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS:

Start Time: 7:45a

End Time: 11:45a

Air Temp: 66F at trip’s start.

Water Surface Temp: 61F

Wind: Winds were S7-8.

Skies: Skies were heavy grey to the point of occasional drizzle.

This evening I fished with Raul G. of Harker Heights, TX, and his 3 kids, Lauren, Olivia, and Cristian.

One of the last fish we boated this evening was this chunky 18.25″ largemouth bass that slammed one of our crankbaits as we flatline trolled attempting to locate tightly bunched groups of white bass.

We caught lots of white bass today both by way of jigging and smoking techniques.

Raul took some vacation time off for Spring Break to spend it with his children and things worked out very well as far as both weather and fish cooperation level were concerned. Just being on the boat was a big thrill for the kids.

We made a short stop at Area 074 where we caught 11 white bass in no time, thus allowing for some “instant gratification” and allowing for the kids to get practiced at the techniques we’d be employing for the rest of the trip.

Next we headed to Area 1055 where we boated 35 white bass from out of ~37 feet in open water, all on TNT180 slabs, and all using either a jigging or smoking tactic.

As sunset approached, the clouds in the west thickened which meant our sunset would be obscured and the fishing would come to an end a bit earlier than normal. We headed to shallower water once this clouding occurred, and fished first at Area 698. We found a few fish on sonar, gave it a try, boated 2 white bass and left after seeing this wasn’t going to materialize into much.

We made our final stop at Area 549/103 and put out twin flatlines with Wiggle Warts and RipShad 200’s tied on to work the entire depth range encountered in this area. We made multiple passes here over about a 30 minute span and put a final 6 fish in the boat, including the largest fish of the trip, a nice 18.25 inch largemouth.

TALLY = 54 fish, all caught and released.

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS:

Start Time: 3:45p

End Time: 7:45p

Air Temp: 73F at trip’s start.

Water Surface Temp: 62.1F

Wind: Winds were S8-10.

Skies: Skies were partly sunny to mostly cloudy.