This morning I was once again joined by Steve Niemeier who had fished with me last week with his grandson, Caleb.  This time it was Caleb’s little sister Macy’s turn to miss a few hours of school and spend a few hours with grandpa.

Steve and Macy pose with Macy’s first hybrid.  We fished live shad today in 35 to 47 feet of water.

After reeling in at least half of our catch of 67, Macy’s battery wore out in the last 35 minutes.  She literally fished ’til she dropped!

 

Today we saw the south wind return after 2 full days of cool northerly winds.  The spawning shad returned to the banks and the fish got back into a solid groove today, feeding well from sunrise through 10:30a.

We made 3 stops today finding abundant, but small fish at our first stop including white bass, short hybrid stripers, and a few blue catfish.  At our second stop, we picked up several nice hybrid right off the bat, but no bite continued thereafter.  Around 9:15a we got on what would be our last area fished and found legal and sub-legal hybrid sprinkled with a few white bass holding “thick” at about 36-39 feet over a 47 foot bottom.

At this last area we never got a full compliment of 4 rods in the water, and could barely keep up with 3.  Then, things really took off and we scaled back to just to rods.  I could no sooner put a bait on, hand it off to Steve or Macy and have them put it down to depth than a fish would grab it and go.  I was baiting, netting, and releasing — baiting, netting and releasing.  This peak lasted about 25 minutes and began to taper out around 10am.

Macy did a really good job today for her age and was not afraid to try new things.  In addition to the fish catching, she also handled and released our fish, she cut up and put out chum by hand, she set her baited rod up in the rod holder at the correct depth without assistance, she learned how to use a Boga Grip, and she dipped shad out of the bait tank with a bait net in order to assist me.