This morning I welcomed some first time clients aboard — Richard K. and his almost-7-year-old step-son, Ammen, in celebration of Ammen’s forthcoming birthday.
Richard and Ammen double-teamed the black bass…
…as well as the white bass.
The start of our trip today was really neat. Richard wanted Ammen to be surprised about his guided fishing trip by boat, so, Richard told him over the previous week that he would be taking him to a summer camp on this particular day. The “story” was that since they were running ahead of schedule, they’d swing by the lake and take a little walk to kill some time. During this walk, Richard would stumble upon me, strike up a conversation in which I would engage Ammen and then surprise him after learning his birthday was near by telling him that this was his lucky day and inviting him aboard for a fishing trip.
As it turned out, this really WAS Ammen’s lucky day, as he landed the largest fish of his fishing career thus far by boating a 2.75 pound largemouth on topwater!
Our day started off with a bit of downrigging around Area 040 to 1245. We picked up 6 fish here without much time or effort spent, but, the fish weren’t so thick or aggressive that I couldn’t bear to leave to investigate other options.
After about 20 minutes on station, we headed to the vicinity of Area 1230 and encountered some light topwater action which would become more aggressive and widespread over the 70 minutes to follow. We started off 3 abreast on the front casting deck with Richard holding his own and Ammen and I working together to keep Ammen supplied with fish. We caught a nice mix of white bass and largemouth on Cork Rigs but eventually, the novelty wore off for Ammen before the fish stopped feeding. So, I left Richard on the front deck with the boat e-anchored into the wind, and Ammen and I dropped down to the lower deck to give smoking a try. He and I tore up the white bass which were down in the lower 1/3 of the water column below all the topwater commotion. By 9:15 it was all over and we had to search elsewhere. This was the first substantial, lengthy topwater feed I’ve witnessed since back in early- to mid-June.
As we began our trip, Richard had cozied up to an insulated mug of coffee which I’m sure he was planning on leisurely sipping on as we waited on the fish. Only thing is that we don’t wait on fish! We aggressively pursue them!! 3 hours after launching and about 57 fish later, Richard finally got around to taking that first sip of his (now cold) coffee!!
We downrigged just a few fish over at Area 1231 and a few more at Area 070, but, neither area held much bait, so we kept looking.
By 10:15 we locked onto some semi-active fish with bait nearby and put a final 9 fish in the boat before calling it a good day right at 10:45.
Our catch of 68 fish consisted of 12 largemouth bass, and 56 white bass.
TALLY = 68 FISH, all caught and released
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TODAY’S CONDITIONS:
Start Time: 6:45a
End Time: 10:45a
Air Temp: 80F at trip’s start.
Water Surface Temp: 86.1F
Wind: Winds were SSW2-3 at sunrise, tapering up to SSW10-11 by trip’s end.
Skies: 40% cloud cover on a fair sky.
Bob Maindelle
Holding the Line Guide Service
254-368-7411
www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com
Salado, Texas