This morning, 24 Nov., I welcomed back returning guests Mike McLaughlin, and his son-in-law and grandson, Keith and Alex Duncan, for their fourth annual outing with me. Each year Mike’s wife, Christa, has been nice enough to get him a gift certificate for Christmas, and, each year around late October or November my phone rings to set up the trip. Today was the day.
Keith landed our top two fish this morning coming right out of the shoot just after sunrise.
Alex and grandpa Mike reeled these two fish in at the same time out of ~38 feet of water on a breakline around mid-morning.
We had an uphill battle facing us today thanks to the passage of a cold front late yesterday, leaving a north wind and high pressure in its wake today. The fish will bite in such conditions as long as there is wind, but they are never overly aggressive and the bite often doesn’t last long on any given school of fish.
We encountered 4 distinct schools of fish today and pulled about 10-12 fish from each before the schools lost interest and we had to start all over again looking for them, jigging to get them interested, then enjoying a few fish before having to repeat the cycle.
Our early fish came from the shallowest water, around 34 feet, and our fish caught late in the trip came from 48 feet.
All of our action came on smoked slabs, with a few fish caught on a slabbing tactic as the bite was about to die off. The bite finally died for good around 12:10p after the N wind died to near calm.
Once again there was no helpful bird activity at all today, which is unusual for this late in the season — hopefully that will change soon.
We wound up with a mixed bag of keeper and short hybrid, keeper and short white bass, a drum, and a largemouth, all taken on a white/silver Redneck Fish’n Jigs 180 Slab in 3/4 oz.
I should note that Mike had quite a number of proverbs to pass on to young Alex. He would initiate these with the phrase, “Alex, there’s an old saying that…”. For example, Mike said, “Alex, there’s an old saying that a bad day of fishing is still better than a good day of work.” In fact, Mike had so many of these sayings that we had to impose a rule that the person who spoke the most “old sayings” also had to buy lunch. This reduced the number of “old sayings” going forward, but, the damage was already done … I believe they drove from the boat ramp directly to Schoepf’s BBQ!
TALLY = 47 FISH, all caught and released
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TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:
Start Time: 7:15a
End Time: 12:10p
Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 46F
Water Surface Temp: 59.4-59.6F
Wind Speed & Direction: NW13, tapering down to NW6, then shifting to N and increasing to 8, before dying around noon.
Sky Conditions: 10% high white bands of clouds on a bluebird sky
Other: GT=30;
AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:
**Area 1489 early
**Area 1383 mid-morning
**Area 1487 mid-morning
**Area 1488 late
Bob Maindelle
Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service
254.368.7411 (call or text)
Salado, TX