This evening I conducted a father-daughter trip for Mr. Jerry Fronczak and his daughter, Nancy.

 
Jerry with 2 of 7 nice hybrid we landed in a 20 minute span just before the setting sun sank below a thick cloud bank in the west.

Nancy with 2 more hybrid from the “run” of seven nice fish we encountered in that same sunset blitz.

Jerry and his wife just moved to Del Webb’s Sun City in Georgetown, Texas, from Chicago at the beginning of April this year to retire and escape the snow and extended winter cold.  Nancy is a graduated occupational therapist now residing in Kansas City, and was down spending a few days with her folks.

Having observed that yesterday’s afternoon trip brought very slow fishing in the first two hours, I did what I could to lend some variety to the trip as we waited for nature to turn on.  I did check one particularly productive area out with live shad, but the fish would have nothing to do with it, so, we headed to try some downrigging over top of some smaller fish I’d spotted on sonar the day before as I was waiting for my afternoon clients to arrive.  We ran downriggers and Storm ThinFins down between 10-15 feet right through schools of suspended fish showing on sonar.  These fish turned out to be smallish white bass.  We boated 5 white bass and 1 crappie in about an hour’s worth of effort, then headed back out to the hybrid grounds to see if they’d turned on yet.

As it turned out, the fish turned back on within 12 minutes of when they had done so the day before, which was around 6:15pm.  This gave us about 2 hours of daylight left to make hay while the sun shone.

We found fish at 3 areas, although the intensity of the bite did not come close to what I’ve observed in the mornings at any of them.

By dark, we worked up 33 fish including one crappie, white bass, hybrid stripers, and blue catfish.  The best action of the trip came in a 20 minutes window from 7:25 to 7:45.  This was right before the setting sun set below a thick bank of clouds in the west, essentially causing a sunset-like lowering of the ambient light levels.

Bob Maindelle
Holding the Line Guide Service

254-368-7411
www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com
Salado, Texas

This morning I fished on Belton Lake with The Barfield Family of Georgetown, Texas.  Trey and Ann were accompanied by their two sons, 15 year old Brandon, and 9 year old Jonathan.  The Barfield’s have been out with me on several occasions, but always on Stillhouse, and always targeting white bass.  Today, we headed to Belton and gunned for hybrid stripers.

 
L to R: Trey, Brandon, Jonathan, and Ann — the Barfield clan caught a mess of ’em today.

Great job, boys!

Trey and I had actually been working on finding a “just right” date to get the whole family on good hybrid since late October last year.  By the time the hybrid cranked up under the first arriving gulls in the autumn, that magic first 3 weeks of November was already booked up.  Then, the super long, cold winter made Spring Break an iffy choice, so we punted again and made today the big day.

Big gizzard shad were hard to come by this morning, but there was still an abundance of threadfin shad spawning in the shallows, so I went with the flow and used what was in abundance.

We made only 2 stops today and found ample quantities of fish at both.  The first location gave up 42 fish in about 2.5 hours of fishing, and the second location gave up an additional 17 fish in just under an hour of fishing. Of the 42 fish boated at our first stop, roughly half were legal (18+ inch) hybrid and the balance consisted mainly of short hybrid along with a few white bass and blue catfish. Stop number two gave up a 50/50 mix of keeper hybrid and keeper white bass.

We had great conditions today which included thick grey cloud cover and a nice S. wind at ~12-13 mph. 

Trey, unfortunately, had to pass on the fishing today.  During a family crawfish boil his (small) dog went after a crawfish which had fallen to the ground and was trying to swallow it whole.  Trey tried to prevent this and wound up getting bit in the process (what’s that one about no good deed ever goes unpunished?).  To add insult to injury, the bite then got infected.  So, just Ann and the boys did the rod work today.

For our efforts we landed 59 fish, all on live shad.

Bob Maindelle
Holding the Line Guide Service

254-368-7411
www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com
Salado, Texas