Fished a half-day morning trip today with Army buddies Bryan G. and Dave R. Bryan literally got back to the U.S. on R&R from Iraq yesterday and was on my boat this morning on a trip his wife gave to him as a gift. Dave is stationed at Ft. Hood on recruiting duty with the Special Forces. The mix of good fishing and good war stories made for an entertaining morning with these nice fellows.
BRYAN’S RESULTS AFTER LISTENING TO GUIDE’S INSTRUCTIONS.
BRYAN’S RESULTS BEFORE LISTEN TO GUIDE’S INSTRUCTIONS.
Start Time: 7:15a
End Time: 1:10p
Air Temp: 63F at trip’s start, and warming to near 72 in the afternoon.
Water Surface Temp: ~64F
Wind: Winds were light but steady from the S at 7-9.
Skies: Skies were 100% fogged in the entire trip with minimal periods of brightness through noon.
I met Bryan and Dave in the fog this morning and navigated to our first location very slowly and entirely by GPS because the fog was so dense.
We began the day in the vicinity of Area 389. As we motored in, there was clearly fish in the area, mostly tight to the bottom and with some balled bait suspended in the lower 1/3 of the water column. We would drop our slabs, jig a bit and if we didn’t get hit, we’d move a few yards and try again. If we did get hit, we’d try to double up on schoolmates pursuing their hooked buddy up to the surface. We put 9 fish in the boat in pretty short order, all between Areas 389 and 138.
Soon, some very brief bird activity broke out a few yards to the N. of us near Area 366. We got on those fish quickly and fished them until they settled down, adding 16 fish to our tally, including a 16″ hybrid for Dave.
Again, this time about 100 yards to our NW, over Area 406, another very brief bit of bird activity erupted. We hopped right on these fish, now in less than 15 feet of water, and switched over to bladebaits and only picked up one fish (surprisingly).
I saw a few large, suspended hooks on sonar and was hoping they were hybrid, and so we put down 3 downlines with an experimental live bait called a black salty (basically a designer carp) but never again saw these fish on sonar to give the baits a fair chance. We did land a barely legal black bass on a salty, but soon stowed that gear and returned to jigging.
As I planned to move us back to where Dave had picked up his hybrid at Area 366, I was watching sonar as we ran over Area 406 and spotted solid fish blanketing the bottom from 18 down to 22 feet here. I buoyed the fish and, long story short, we stayed on top of this very consistent action for over 2 1/2 hours. The fish would move through this area in fits and starts, but we never went more than a few minutes without catching, and often landed doubles and triples. The big fish of the trip, a 6.25 pound hybrid shown above, came off this area. It, and all other jigging fish, were caught on the trusty TNT 180 in 3/8 oz. — you just can’t beat that little gem!! We had a brief spike in the action when the fish really got hot around 11:30, in conjunction with a sharp, brief increase in the wind speed.
By 12:45 we’d boated 89 fish. I got a big thumbs-up from the fellows to press on to our 100 fish goal This task took us all of 25 minutes and we agreed to call it quits with the fishing tapering off after Bryan swung #100 over the side.
TALLY = 100 FISH, all caught and released
Bob Maindelle, Owner, Holding The Line Guide Service and Kids Fish, Too! Stillhouse Hollow Fishing Guide, Belton Lake Fishing Guide, Lake Georgetown Fishing Guide, Walter E. Long (Decker) Lake Fishing Guide. Offering Salado Fishing, Killeen Fishing and Ft. Hood Fishing