This morning, 21 Nov., I welcomed aboard Anthony Vaughters of Killeen, and his mother and brother, Velvet and Karon Vaughters, both of Connecticut. Velvet and Karon are visiting for the Thanksgiving holidays.
Anthony landed our largest fish of the trip this morning, a nice 21″, 4.00 pound hybrid. That’s his proud mama, Velvet, looking on.
Karon got the hang of smoking early and steadily caught fish throughout our trip this morning. This was the second of our two legal hybrid, going right at 19″.
Anthony is the owner of Kids’ X-pression Child Care in Killeen, near Killeen High School. I first met him early this past summer when his girlfriend bought him a fishing gift certificate because, according to her, “he works all the time and needs a break”. We had a good day catching hybrid on live shad at that time. Karon had never fished from a boat before, and Velvet was just along for the ride and did not fish, so, we had 2 rods going, plus my own rod on occasion.
Now that the water has cooled, the fish are much deeper and vertical jigging is the ticket. Unfortunately, we were greeted this morning with a thick fog — so thick in fact that I pushed our launch time back 30 minutes. Foggy conditions don’t allow for a “normal” sunrise and brightening of the sky and deep water, and generally puts a damper on the fishing.
A number of times today we searched for and found fish, only to catch just a few out of the much larger schools of fish they came from. Usually, once the most active fish are caught with a smoking retrieve, we can “mop up” with a standard vertical jigging tactic, but even that was not well accepted by the fish today.
So, we simply worked hard, covered ground, and slowly but surely put together a decent catch of 39 fish, including 2 nice hybrid of legal size and many more “short” hybrid and white bass. The fish we caught were primarily the minority of fish that were willing to give chase to our slabs presented in a “smoking” style from amongst a generally disinterested majority. I noted that the Redneck Fish’n Jigs 180 in silver halo and white did a bit better than the all-silver halo color today.
It was interesting to note that none of our fish regurgitated shad and that the two legal hybrid we boated both had concave bellies, indicating the fish population has not fed heavily very recently.
A little inside joke: If you ever see Mrs. Velvet, just ask her about “jiggly” — you’ll be sure to get a smile!
TALLY = 39 FISH, all caught and released
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TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:
Start Time: 7:45a
End Time: 1:00p
Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 61F
Water Surface Temp: 60F
Wind Speed & Direction: SE7-10
Sky Conditions: 100% clouded, grey skies with fog for first 2 hours
Other: GT=30;
AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:
**Area 1290/1325 early
**Area 1485-1486 all along this breakline from when the fog lifted to trip’s end
Bob Maindelle
Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service
254.368.7411 (call or text)
Salado, TX