This Fishing Trip was very “Moving” — 91 Fish, Austin Fishing Guide Report, 22 June 2013






This morning I fished with Mr. Randy G. of Celina, TX, and his adult grandson, First Lieutenant Garrett S., currently serving with the 2-8 Cav. under the 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood.

Randy (L) and Garrett (R) used a combination of casting bladebaits, working slabs, and downrigging to put together a nice catch of 91 fish on this half-day morning trip.

Randy first contacted me about 5 weeks ago to coordinate a trip for he and Garrett, but, as happens in Army life, duty called and Garrett seemed to be either in the field, getting ready to go to the field, just coming back from the field, or (terror of terrors) assigned as Staff Duty Officer until today.

As we got to talking, I learned that Garrett was a part of the Texas A&M Corps of Cadets and was commissioned as a U.S. Army Chemical Corps officer. We had quite a few things in common which made for good conversation. Garrett has wedding plans for this coming April (so naturally, Grandpa Randy and I automatically thought to ourselves “significant reduction in fishing time”, however, neither of us said anything to poor Garrett).

As fate would have it, today was also the day Garrett was due to move from one apartment to another, so, not only did Grandpa Randy get to go fishing, he also “got” to help Garrett move.

We met right on time at 6:15, allowed the froth on the water to settle down from the 16-boat bass tournament that blasted out of the launch site just ahead of us, and headed on out at a leisurely pace to the fishing grounds, thus allowing me so cover the basics of safety and the presentations we’d be using as we motored along.

We began our day hopeful to encounter some topwater action, but, the stiff wind put the brakes on that. Regardless, the fish continued to hold where they have been for several weeks now (Area 484/444/660), and so we kicked off with some downrigging to allow us to have a shot at catching fish as I studied sonar looking for heavier concentrations of them. We scored 4 fish very quickly including 3 largemouth bass and 1 white bass, so this immediately bolstered our confidence level and we continued on with downrigging until, about 30 minutes past sunrise (given the grey clouds that masked the direct sun until that time), we marked the first fish beginning to school up in the lower third of the water column. When we found this scenario, we stopped the boat, put it in a “hover”, and cast with bladebaits worked lift-drop style amongst these bottom-oriented, schooled fish. By the time the action died out here, we’d boated a total of 39 fish.

Next, we headed to Area 1222-1226 and found fish holding off the side of the slope here in 25-30 feet of water. In several areas we saw tightly grouped fish on sonar. I suspected a “smoking” presentation might work in this situation, so, we gave it a try. Garrett was the first one to hook up and “break the ice”. Once that first fish was hooked and played in, the door opened on all of its schoolmates. We sat in one location and boated 20 fish in short order as the school got worked up into a strong feed by the frenzied action of the hooked fish. After that school cooled off and moved on, we returned to downrigging for the remainder of the trip, regularly hooking up with singles and doubles on the tandem rig.

By around 10:30, the action began to drop off noticeably. We pressed on until around 11:15 and had to work harder and wait longer for each fish we caught after that 10:30am mark. When all was said and done, we’d boated 83 white bass, 4 largemouth, and 4 freshwater drum.


TALLY = 91 FISH, all caught and released

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS:

Start Time: 6:15a

End Time: 11:15a

Air Temp: 76F at trip’s start.

Water Surface Temp: 84.5F

Wind: Winds were S12 at sunrise and tapered slowly up to S15 by trip’s end.

Skies: Skies were greyed over with some low, thin clouds in the east until ~30 minutes after sunrise, then the skies cleared to fair with 25% cloud cover.








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