I fished a half-day morning trip today with Shari A. of Leander, and her friend, John, of Little River. This trip was a birthday surprise for John, and, I must say, Shari did a great job in pulling it all off.

Shari and John with our largest fish of the day, a 21 3/8 inch hybrid falling just shy of the 5 pound mark taken on a Pet Spoon in deep water.

Shari, originally from Canada, had some good tales to tell “about” her dad taking her fishing up north after we caught this one. Nice smallmouth, eh?

As we got underway, I was hoping that on the heels of this past Wednesday’s awesome topwater display, that we’d encounter at least a bit of topwater, but that was not to be. Two days of tropical depression-driven rains, an unstable atmosphere and weekend boat pressure put the lid on topwater today.

We looked over several areas both visually and with sonar, and finally wetted a line at Area 651. In this area, I saw a bit of bait (less than I’d like, but okay) but a lot of sonar signatures of hybrid striped bass. We put downrigger balls down to 27 feet over a bottom that varied from 30 to 40 feet, and just set up a trolling grid over this area until we saw some consistency in results. We boated 2 hybrid right away and then things calmed down a bit. I noted the wind had let up and the murky skies had cleared a bit, so, with action kind of slow, we went looking once again for some topwate action, but none was to be found, so, we returned to Area 651 and spent the entirety of the trip right there.

Upon our return, we began boating fish more regularly with the improved sky and wind conditions. I also noted that the fish showed a definite preference for the single Pet Spoon versus one used in combination behind a Lunker Licker. By the time the fishing began to wane and the heat began to kick in pretty good at 11:45 or so, we’d boated a total of 24 keeper hybrid (and no shorts!), 4 white bass, and 1 smallmouth bass. We lost ~4 other hybrid over the course of the morning, as well.

TALLY = 29 FISH, all caught and released

Today’s Conditions:

Start Time: 6:25a

End Time: 11:45a

Air Temp: 77F at trip’s start, heading towards the mid-90’s.

Water Surface Temp: ~85.4F

Wind: Winds varied from SSE to SSW up to 10 mph this morning

Skies: Skies were murky and grey until around 9:30 and then began to clear to 20% high white clouds.