Fished a half-day afternoon trip today with Dave L., a general contractor from Denver, CO, and his son, Andy, an air defense artilleryman now stationed at Ft. Hood. Things started a bit slow but ended with a bang as the cold, raw NE wind and damp conditions of the past few days finally relented.

ANDY POSES WITH OUR FIRST FISH OF THE TRIP, A DOWNRIGGERED BLACK BASS.

DAVE HOISTS THE LARGEST FISH OF THE DAY, A HYBRID THAT FELL FOR A TNT 180 SLAB.

Start Time: 2:00p (with DST now in effect)


End Time: 7:45p


Air Temp: 44F at trip’s start warming to 48F by sunset (obscured).


Water Surface Temp: ~57F

Wind: Winds were NE at 7-9 until abour 3:30p when they slacked off to 3-5 and went due N.

Skies: Skies were heavily overcast the entire trip.

We started off with a little downrigging near Area 365 to get baits in the water and get a feel for the fish activity level, location, forage status, etc. We immediately picked up a nice 3 lbs. black bass on a Swimmin’ Image and continued working the rigger for 4 more whites and a juvenile hybrid, all on the White Willow spoon. At one point we came up on a 35′ to 25′ transition and saw whites stacked up on that slope. We buoyed, dropped slabs (3/8 oz. TNT 180’s) and worked that school over for 9 more fish — all white bass between 10-12 inches. The fish were in a very sluggish mood at this point, so we decided to look for more active fish or birds.

We headed to the vicinity of Area 172 and found plenty of bait, as well as suspended and bottom hugging gamefish. The water was a little murky due to the rains so I was a bit concerned. We ran the downrigger first and picked up 2 whites right on the shallowest part of this feature on back to back passes. Thinking the fish were pretty active, I backed off and rigged us up with bladebaits. Working these for about 10 minutes over the area that the 2 downriggered fish came from only resulted in 1 caught and 1 other missed strike. I put the rigger back down and we picked up one very small white, but then failed to see fish on sonar on subsequent passes.

We gave up on that and headed to Area 388. Scattered bait was about all that was showing here. We downrigged while the fellows snacked a little. We got one suspended largemouth of about 1.5 lbs. and left this behind.

Our final stop came at around 5:25p at Area at this point we’d boated 20 fish. I spotted terns working in the distance over this area while glassing with my spotting scope. As we arrived, the birds were acting very fishy — circling tightly over one area, occasionally diving down to capture shad. We got to these fish quickly, knowing that wintertime fish activity on a cold front can be brief. We immediately got into the best action of the day. We found very aggressively feeding white bass in 22-27 feet. A standard jigging approach with slabs was the most consistent producer, although an easing approach was required later as these fish slacked off towards dark. We caught numerous doubles and triples as the three of us worked these slabs effectively near bottom. Fish number 40 was the best fish of the day — the hybrid pictured above — landed by Dave. In all, from 5:30 to 7:45p we caught 58 fish within 50 yards of our buoy, only occasionally moving to stay under the most active birds. Of these 58 fish, we got 2 largemouth, 1 drum, 1 hybrid, 1 sunfish, and 54 whites, many exceeding 13.5 inches, and all with slender, concave bellies indicating a lack of heavy feeding over these past few days of cold front conditions.

TALLY = 78 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