I fished a half-day morning “Kids Fish, Too!” trip with Justin and Jacob T. and thier buddy, Hunter S., all accompanied by Mr. Carl.

Little Jacob with a nice black bass taken on topwater just as the sun was rising

Justin was “all over ’em” when it came to downrigging the white bass

Start Time: 6:20a

End Time: 11:00am

Air Temp: 69F at trip’s start, heading towards the mid-90’s with clear, calm conditions.

Water Surface Temp: ~82.1F

Wind: Winds were W at 3 at sunrise, then went light from the SSE at 3-4, then went slack after 10am.

Skies: Skies were clear and bright.

As we pushed off this morning we headed for open water looking for some topwater bass action that should be starting about now. We found some sporadic activity around Area 026 and I did hook and let Jacob land one bass here, but this was not conducive to the casting abilities the boys possessed — these fish were surfacing few and far between and required both fast and accurate casts, so, we passed on these fish and searched elsewhere.

We headed to between Areas 485 and 459 and hit the white bass with downriggers and one skimmer, all rigged up with Pets. We spent about 75 minutes working these fish over until things got real quiet. By that time we’d netted 6 fish for each of the boys (18 total). 16 came on the downlines set at 8-10 and at 18-21, and 2 came on the skimmer.

We next headed to between Areas 207 and 208 and again went with the downriggers and one skimmer. We boated 3 more white bass here and missed 2 more. By now, even with the action moderate, the boys’ attention span was maxing out, so, we went and did something totally different in the way of sunfish fishing in shallow water with slipcorks. Despite a few snags and tangles, each boy managed one sunfish at Area 200, and then it was off to fish for a final big largemouth.

We anchored up at Area 430 and put 3 tightlines down. Long story short, we had 4 solid strikes and landed one fish out of these, a nice 16 inch largemouth that chose Jacob’s rod. With that mission accomplished, we decided to call it a day and get the boys delivered back to dockside for an afternoon jiujitsu tournament (wish I still had that much energy!!).

TALLY = 26 FISH