This evening I fished with Mr. John Stephenson, former Bell County Commissioner, and his adopted son, Gilbert.  Another of John’s friends, Mark, was supposed to join us but had some trouble locating his license, and never did make it on the boat.

L to R: John and Gilbert Stephenson with a few of the white bass we caught by downrigging and fishing lead slabs vertically during the short bite this evening from 5:30 to 6:45pm.

As I got to talk with John and Gilbert, I learned that Gilbert has a very interesting background.  He was adopted by John and his wife, Shirley, around age 6 and was born in Saskatchewan, Canada, among the Cherokee Indians there.  John and Shirley (both U.S. Army veterans) traveled the world while serving our nation, and have fond memories especially of their time in Panama in the 1970’s.

On the fishing front, we got off to a late start thanks to all the license-hunting, but while we were waiting for Gilbert to arrive I fished with John not too far from the boat ramp we launched from, and we found a very active school of white bass pursuing shad at mid depth in 24 to 28 feet of water over the deeper bottom (38-40 feet). We ran twin downriggers through these fish with a three-arm umbrella rig and in less than 30 minutes time picked up 16 fish.

Unfortunately, by the time Gilbert arrived these fish were settling down, and we managed to pick up just three more white bass before having to go out and search for more fish. We spent the remaining time using a combination of downrigging and vertical jigging to add another 16 fish to our total for a tally of 32 fish caught on this trip.

Although there are certainly exceptions, generally speaking, morning fishing is a bit more productive than evening time fishing. Through the years, given the detailed records that I’ve maintained, I’ve seen a trend emerge that indicates an evening fishing trip will yield about 60% of the catch the that morning trip gave up when conditions are roughly similar between morning and evening. Evening bites tend to be less intense and less lengthy than morning bites, and this evening’s trip followed that trend.

 

TALLY = 32 FISH

 

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 5:30p

End Time:  8:30pm

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start:    96F

Water Surface Temp:   87.8F

Wind Speed & Direction:    SSW11-13

Sky Conditions:    Fair with no cloud cover.

Other: GT=0

 

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area  1422-1428 Downrigging for 16 suspended white bass, then smoking for 3 more

**Area  196 fishing slabs vertically for 12 white bass

**Area  912 downrigged for one white bass as the bite was dying

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

Salado, TX

This morning I fished with Sue Phillips of the Austin area. Sue has only been in Texas a few weeks and wanted to understand about the tools and tactics necessary to successfully land fish in the Lone Star state.

Sue cast fast and accurately to topwater feeding largemouth bass and was rewarded for her skill.

When the largemouth got scarce on top, the white bass remained a staple down below.

Sue shows off her “triple” — 3 fish taken on the same rod at the same time using a 3-armed umbrella rig equipped with Luhr Jensen Pet Spoons.
Sue is a traveling nurse doing a three month stint with the Seton hospital system in Austin where she works as an emergency room nurse.  Sue is originally from New Jersey and has future plans to travel to California, Alaska, and Florida to work and fish. Sue owns a kayak, and up to this point has spent most of her time fishing Walter E. Long reservoir on the east side of Austin.

Personally it was nice to have a “Jersey girl” aboard, as I spent 5 1/2 years in central New Jersey when my dad was in the military.  Sue actually owns her own small boat and fishes out of Belmar at the mid-point of Jersey’s Atlantic coast.  We’d fished some of the same places and for some of the same species, and so conversing about all of those things was nostalgic.

Sue quite capably handled a spinning rod, and so when we got into fish this morning we were able to make the most of the action we worked hard to find. We begin our day downrigging, and, after catching a few singles, a double, and then a triple, we found heavily schooled, bottom oriented white bass relatively early in the morning. From 8:05 AM to 9:55 AM we stayed on top of schooled white bass and saw occasional largemouth bass popping bait near the boat on a continuous basis.  Using silver, 3/4 ounce TNT slabs with a smoking retrieve did the trick for numbers of white bass.

Since one of Sue’s objectives was to learn about tools and tactics, we stopped fishing slabs in the middle of a strong bite (which I normally wouldn’t do) in order to transition over to blade baits fish on braided line and spinning rigs in order to introduce her to that equally effective technique. Then, when the largemouth bass action got strong, we put the heavy-metal lures away and fished top water hard baits for school-sized largemouth bass in the 13-16″ range. The clear Heddon Spook Junior did the trick this morning for seven largemouth bass.

Just as the fishing turned on earlier than usual this morning, it also wound down a bit earlier than usual. By around 10:20 AM the bass were no longer schooling, the white bass had finished biting, and the few birds that had been feeding over top of the schooling action disappeared.

For our efforts we landed 64 fish today including 57 white bass and seven largemouth bass. In doing so we were able to cover four different techniques: downrigging, vertical jigging with slabs, fishing blade baits horizontally, and fishing top water lures for schooling fish. As we wrapped up today’s trip we went through Sue’s tackle bag together and I pointed out to her some of the more effective baits and colors and rigging techniques that would help her catch more fish more consistently in the waters around Austin.

 

TALLY = 64 FISH

 

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 6:50am

End Time:  10:30am

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start:    81F

Water Surface Temp:   85.1F

Wind Speed & Direction:    SSE7 at trip’s start slowly turning to SSW9-10 by trip’s end

Sky Conditions:    Fair with 10% cloud cover.

Other: GT=0

 

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 864-866 downrigging and smoking

**Area 070 smoking

**Area 194 smoking (with topwater present)

**Area 194-1394 largemouth and white bass action spread throughout with whites on bottom and blacks on top

 

 

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

Salado, TX