I fished a half-day morning trip with Mary L. of Lima, Ohio, accompanied by her son, Jason, of Austin, and her dad, Bob, of Temple. This trip was planned in celebration of Bob’s 89th birthday which fell on this date!! Happy birthday, Bob!

Mary traveled in from Lima, OH, and took her dad, Bob, fishing for his 89th birthday. He loved his 4 1/2 pound present!!

We intended to get going at 7:15am, but, Mary warned me that 89, sometimes the plan is not what becomes reality, and, in fact, we didn’t get launched until about 7:45, but, as it turned out, as I was waiting, I did a bit of scouting for fish and bait and came upon a nice concentration of both, landed 3 fish in quick succession, put a buoy down at Area 676, and returned to pick up my guests, very confident that were were ready to have a good fishing trip.

Once everybody was onboard, we headed out to the marked area, found fish near the buoy, and decided to first shoot for them by way of downrigging. Since Jason was just along for the ride, I handed rods to Mary and Bob and they started feeding out the lines to the proper distance behind the boat. As luck would have it, Bob caught a fish within seconds of having his lure hit the water before we even set the lines down at depth. Once we did get both lines down we caught 1-2 fish on each pass, but as I studied sonar as we slowly moved about, I noticed multiple heavy concentrations of fish along a 25-30 foot breakline here, so heavy, in fact, that I knew we could tease them into striking with a smoking technique using slab spoons.

So, down went the slabs (TNT180’s) and up came the fish. Over a 75 minute span spent jigging, we boated 35 fish here at Areas 676 and 677. About 3/4 of the fish were short whites and hybrids and the remainder were solid whites. We didn’t find any keeper hybrid here.

By 9:38 these fish were tapering off and so we made a move to Area 346. We encountered only one school of fish here passing through beneath the boat on the move, but managed 6 fish out of the school including a larger, but still short, hybrid as well as the fish that anchored our string today, and, the largest fish that Bob had ever landed in his 89 years — a nice 4.50 pound hybrid striped bass.

After this we fished here a bit longer, and came up empty handed. We went and looked at a few areas and found little until motoring over Area 098. I found abundand shad here both suspended and along the bottom, so, we put lines down and came up with a nice blue catfish. By now it was around 11:30 and Mary felt it wise for Bob’s sake to call it a good trip right there, so, we made a special trip over to the waterfall to use it a a backdrop as the trio each held up two of the larger white bass we’d landed.

That accomplished, we settled in for the ride back to the dock, safely transferred Bob from boat to dry land and bid one another farewell.

Today’s tally was 42 fish. Bob shook my hand before he got back into the car and told me this was the best fishing trip that he’d ever been on. I thanked him for the compliment and we parted ways.

TALLY = 42 FISH

Today’s Conditions:

Starting Air Temp: 70F

Water Surface Temp: 76F

Winds: SSW8

Skies: 20% cloudy on fair skies