This fifth day of Spring Break 2013 (Friday, 15 March) I was joined in the afternoon by Jerry W. of Harker Heights, and twin brothers Daniel and Steven K., both now in their early twenties, whom Jerry has come to know through his ministry to young people.
L to R — Daniel, Jerry, and Steven with just a sampling of the 101 fish that tore up our slabs this evening.
We had an interesting crew aboard today. Jerry, an insurance agent and youth/young adult minister, was the ring leader, keeping things stirred up by regularly and quite audibly announcing to Steven and Daniel whenever he caught a fish, thus making good on his promise at the trip’s beginning to outfish them both. Steven was our young combat veteran and U.S. Army chaplain’s assistant just back from Afghanistan; his motto was “under-promise, over-deliver”, including promises made to self; thus, he set his sights on catching up to as many as 6 fish today so he could then handsomely exceed his goal. And Daniel was our penniless, professional student, existing on a diet of mainly ramen noodles and wearing shirts apparently borrowed from homeless people. He also served as Jerry’s auxiliary conscience, regularly asking questions like, “Does you wife know you are eating that?”. And so it was … my job was to take this rag-tag group of individuals and form them into a highly efficient, fish-catching team in under 5 hours.
Today’s trip unfolded much in the same was most of this week’s afternoon trips have — it started slowly, followed by a solid deep-water bite from 5:30 to 7:00p, then followed by a mid-depth 20-28 foot feet just minutes before sunset.
We searched with sonar for nearly all of our first hour on the water, initially making contact with a small school of white bass at Area 088. We slabbed for these fish in 27-29 feet of water and pulled 17 fish of various lengths before the bite went sour.
Next, we headed to open water and found a large congregation of fish on Area 946. The majority of these fish were small, but the action was consistent and everyone was having so much fun poking fun at each other, the steady action seemed just to be a backdrop to the camaraderie. Daniel pulled a nice 2.00 pound largemouth from this area, and everyone caught a few fish which were photo-worth. Steven hooked into a very nice fish — not sure if it was a big catfish or largemouth — but it ran hard for timber and made it before Steven could turn it and we lost our shot at that one. Every trip needs a “big one that got away” story, right? We wound up boating 77 fish here and hooked and lost quite a few more.
As the sun fell to within 20 minutes of setting, we made a final move to Area 067. I’d encountered a really strong pre-sunset bite in this vicinity the night before, so we headed here to see if a pattern would emerge, and it did. We arrived at this area with a tally of 94 fish; everyone had their sights set on making that 100 fish mark. No sooner did we establish a hover than we were into fish on our TNT180 slabs used in both a jigging and an easing tactic. Steven carried the day for us here, putting 3 of the 6 fish we needed to make the century mark in the boat in no time flat. Everyone soon chipped in and, by dark, the count stood at 101!
TALLY = 101 fish, all caught and released
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TODAY’S CONDITIONS:
Start Time: 3:30p
End Time: 7:45p
Air Temp: 76F at trip’s start
Water Surface Temp: ~58F
Wind: Winds were S17 tapering to S9
Skies: Skies were fair and cloudless.