This morning I fished with John and Kelly M. of Temple, and their teenaged son, Matthew.

John took this really nice 13.75 inch white crappie out of 38 feet of water from amongst a large school of smallish white bass.

L to R — Matthew, Kelly, and John with a few of the nice fish we took on bladebaits early in the day.





Matthew is an all-sports fan and has a fascination with statistics, so, it was most fitting today, after he’s kept close watch on my “fishing scoreboard” via Facebook, that he and his family took the lead in the “most fish caught” standings for this calendar year so far.

Our winds returned from the south today and built to over 15mph, AND we had some nice, grey cloud cover. That is perfect white bass weather and, as a result, we wound up boating exactly 152 fish on this half-day outing.

We started the day off with mostly clear skies, but a cloud bank from the north moved in quickly and obscured the sun within an hour of sunrise. While the sun was shining, but still low in the morning sky we flatline trolled with crankbaits in the vicinity of Area 116 in 12-16 feet of water and picked up a total of 9 fish (8 white bass and 1 crappie) in just 3 passes before bird activity caught our attention and took us to better action.

We spotted 3 gulls, 3 herons, and an osprey, all looking “fishy” over a patch of water between Areas 741 and 742. When we idled in, sonar clearly showed abundant white bass spread throughout this area. As things settled down, we witnessed white bass forcing schools of shad to the surface on occasion. This was in 8-14 feet of water, so, I opted to go with a horizontal approach fan-casting bladebaits until we connected, and then saturating productive areas as long as they would produce. Over a 90 minute span, we boated an additional 44 fish here. 90% of these fish were beefy, 13-14+ inch long white bass.

After the shallow bite died, we went looking deep along the old Lampasas River channel. After a bit of searching, we found fish with sonar in ~38 feet of water between Areas 074 and 1017. We arrived at this area at 10:30a, caught fish on the very first drop of our slabs, and kept right on catching fish through 12:15p — nearly 2 solid hours. Most of these fish were small, but what they lacked in size, they made up for in abundance. In all, we pulled 98 fish off this area including 97 white bass and 1 white crappie, which taped at 13.75 inches in length. Every last fish here was taken on a TNT180 white slab fished vertically. We did occasionally nab one on an “easing” tactic, but these fish were reluctant to leave bottom very far behind.

Not much else to report! We essentially fished 3 places, and every last one of them produced today. Minimal time was spent searching for fish as they were up and feeding and readily located given the very favorable conditions we encountered.

TALLY = 152 fish, all caught and released

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS:

Start Time: 7:30a

End Time: 1:00p

Air Temp: 54F at trip’s start

Water Surface Temp: ~63-64F

Wind: Winds were S7 building to SSE17+

Skies: Skies were grey but still bright.

In the wake of some mild thunderstorms and about 1/10th of an inch of rainfall overnight, we awoke to a clear, cool, bright morning. I welcomed Ken C., his wife, Kris, Kris’ sister, Angie, and Angie’s son, sixteen year old Andrew, aboard for some white bass fishing on Stillhouse.

L to R — Ken, Kris, Andrew, and Angie with the “best of the bunch” from our catch of white bass today.

Kris boated this nice 2 pounder from deep water on a slab.

Ken and Kris have fished with me once before in the summer months when downrigging was in vogue. Today, early flatline trolling followed by deepwater jigging was the name of the game. Angie and Andrew were down on Spring Break from the Kansas City, KS, area. I think we were all hoping for some warmer weather than we got this morning, so we took the lemons and made some lemonade.

As we got started, we flatline trolled with crankbaits in 12-16 feet of water near Area 116. We scored with 9 fish landed out of 12 fish hooked over the first hour or so. When that shallow bite died, we headed deep looking for congregated fish to jig for.

We encountered deep, congregated fish in two distinct areas: Area 1017/1172 and Area 638/639. At both locations the fish were in ~38 feet, tightly bunched and fed with only moderate aggressiveness. Technique is incredibly important when fish get tight-lipped and with the wind, boat movement and all 4 guests very new to this tactic, technique was difficult to maintain, but we did it.

For our efforts we managed to boat a grand total of 54 fish, including the four shown in the photo above, all of which beat the 13.5″ mark. 52 of these fish were white bass and the remaining 2 were largemouth bass. We got no assistance today from the birds; all the deepwater fish were found “the hard way” via sonar search.

TALLY = 54 fish, all caught and released

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS:

Start Time: 7:30a

End Time: 1:00p

Air Temp: 52F at trip’s start

Water Surface Temp: ~63F

Wind: Winds were NNE8 building to NE14

Skies: Skies were clear and bluebird.