Today, Thursday, 24 March, I fished with father and son Peter and Theo Little. Theo, a 1st Lieutenant in the U.S. Army stationed at Ft. Hood treated his dad to a fishing trip for his 55th birthday. Neither fellow had ever caught a fish before, so, we started with the basics of holding and using spinning gear, and built up from there.
Peter Little landed this 5.125 pound Stillhouse largemouth from amongst a school of white bass we had been jigging for for over an hour. Once this fish came on the scene, the mostly 1 and 2 year old white bass departed the area. After Peter landed this fish, we never caught another white bass at this area.
Theo Little with a sampling of the mostly 2-year class fish we vertically jigged for from start to finish on this cold front-influenced evening trip on which both Theo and his dad caught the first fish of their lives.
Both men are followers of Christ, so that made the great fishing and this new experience for these fellows that much sweeter as we got to converse about how and when we came to begin our relationship with Him.
The weather we experienced this afternoon, closely mimicked the weather I encountered last Saturday. A hard coldfront blew in overnight dropping a bit of rain and bringing heavy cloud cover and strong winds. As I did Saturday, I waited for the winds to peak and begin to fall off before we headed out fishing.
My experience has shown that until the winds subside, the fishing will be good, assuming boat control is possible given the strong winds typically experienced in a cold front’s wake. Today as we launched, we faced 17mph winds with higher gusts and boat control was difficult but not impossible. By the time we moved to our second area, the winds, which steadily tapered over the entire trip, were down to 15 mph and quite manageable.
We looked at 8 areas with sonar and found solid fishing on 3 of them, with marginal quantities of fish at two others, and nothing on the remaining three.
For quite some time now, the afternoon bite has been a one-trick-pony, and that one trick is deep vertical jigging. We jigged in 34-38 feet at the 3 areas that gave up fish for us this afternoon.
We wrapped up a bit earlier than usual. It seems Theo has been cooking for his dad and, well … I’ll just stop right there.
The fellows put exactly 83 white bass and 1 largemouth in the boat this evening and missed a good number more due to inexperience, but both definitely improved greatly from start time to the time we finished up.
TALLY = 84 FISH, all caught and released
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TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:
Start Time: 3:45p
End Time: 6:55p
Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 60F
Water Surface Temp: 64.7F
Wind Speed & Direction: Hard NE winds at 17 tapering down to 10
Sky Conditions: Clear blue skies thanks to incoming high pressure
Water Level: 624.62 and falling with 622.0 being full pool. Water being released at 1139 cubic feet per second. Lake fell 0.13 feet in the past 24 hours
Other: GT= 25
Wx SNAPSHOT (a graphical look at the forecast that faced us today):
(not available for this date)
AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:
Bob Maindelle
Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service
254.368.7411 (call or text)
Website: www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com
E-mail: Bob@HoldingTheLineGuideService.com
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