I fished a half day “Kids Fish, Too!” trip with returning guests Mike and Chloe Blackwell. This trip we added big brother Luke to the mix and had a great time on the water.
The Blackwell’s are preparing to leave home and career behind to serve the Lord as missionaries in Thailand very soon. It’s good to know there are still folks out there who act in faith!!
As for the fishing, we got off to a slow start with slack wind, but, once the wind got going and we positioned ourselves to take advantage of it, we caught fish consistently the remainder of the morning.
The Blackwell’s with our biggest catch of the morning, Chloe’s 2.75 pound largemouth bass.
…and a healthy bunch of pre-spawn white bass to round out today’s catch of 28 fish.
Start Time: 7:00a
End Time: 11:30a
Air Temp: 46F at trip’s start
Water Surface Temp: 56F
Wind: Winds started light from the WNW and then increased to around 10 from the NNW, then slowly tapered off to calm by 5pm, beginning around 11am.
Skies: Skies were clear and bright all day.
Environmental Note: Peaches began blooming today.
As our trip began, we looked in mid-depths for schooled fish on bottom hoping to get a few quick fish in the boat by way of vertical jigging, but, with slack winds, that just wasn’t happening. We gave Area 598 a try and raised about 5 fish, but they were nothing more than curious, and we never did hook a fish here.
We moved on Area 116 and established a trolling circuit here. We ran 4 lines, the inner 2 with Bombers and the outer 2 with Rip Shads and the combination worked well. We caught fish equally well on all rods and had boated 25 fish by 10am including 6 largemouth bass with the largest going 2.75 pounds, 1 crappie, and 18 white bass of all sizes, up to 13 inches.
With about an hour left to go, we “voted” on whether to keep doing what we were doing or try drifting some large live baits in order to try to connect with some larger bass. Everyone voted to go for the big ones, so, we moved to Area 536 and rigged up with both large shiners and Black Saltys and went to work.
We boated 3 fish over the final hour (with action beginning to die to to the bright and calming conditions) including one keeper largemouth, one short largemouth, and a white bass that went ~12 inches.