Today was my first fishing trip of the new year. I had the boat in for some end-of-season fiberglass work, a booth at the Central Texas Boat Show, and a string of 2 weeks of nasty, cold weather, so, it was good be back at it once and for all today.

Joseph with one of two just-short hybrid he landed today.

Today I fished with a young man, Joseph H., from my church. Joseph faced some tragic events in his life over the holidays and needed some “guy time”, so, we spent the day together getting to fish a lot and talk a little, and that worked out well.

I’ve noted many times in my blogging that foggy conditions NEVER provide for good fishing, and today was no exception. We moved our start time back to avoid the thickest of the fog, but, what fog remained still put a damper on the fish action until it lifted. The statistics tell the story … we boated 26 fish from 9:30 to 1:30 (4 hours) under cover of fog and never saw any useful bird action during this time. From 1:30 to 5:00 (3 1/2 hours), we boated 49 fish and had birds providing helpful cues for a solid 40 minute span during this time.

We boated fish today as follows: at Area 593/132 — only 2 white bass and 2 drum; at Area 355/083 on the 38 foot contour — 22 fish, all whites and juvenile hybrid; at Area 098 — 10 fish, all white bass; at Area 081/715 — 4 just-short hybrid, 2 blacks, and 6 white bass, all under birds in 36-38 feet as well as 1 hybrid and 1 black downrigging in this vicinity, and at Area 714 — 25 fish, a mix of white bass and juvenile hybrid. Except for the 2 downrigged fish, all others were taken on either a 3/8 or 3/4 oz. TNT 180 slab. Fish went only for a jigged slab or an eased slab today — smoking them was a no go.

Now, about that glove … Joseph was a bit reluctant to take off his gloves today despite getting hooks caught in the gloves incessantly — I don’t know if it was because his hands were cold or if, because he wanted to take his own fish off the hook, the gloves offered some hand protection thus allowing him to do so. Regardless, as we were downrigging around some suspended fish, one of our rods went off. A hybrid struck a White Willow spoon and so Joseph grabbed the rod and was working the fish to the net. Once we’d landed the hybrid, we saw it was just shy of legal, so, I told Joseph we had to get the fish back in the water quickly. As he was putting the rod up, once again his glove got hooked. Knowing time was of the essence, he shoved the rod in the rod holder, took his hand out of the glove, thus leaving the glove strangely suspended over the water looking like this …

… that’s pretty quick thinking for a 6th grader!

The fishing really tapered off around 4:10 and by 5:05, just shy of sunset with no promising bird action gathering, we headed for home.

TALLY = 75 fish, all caught and released

TODAY’S CONDITIONS:

Start Time: 9:30a

End Time: 5:05p

Air Temp: 48F at trip’s start.

Water Surface Temp: ~50.0F

Wind: Winds were SE3-4 with a heavy fog early, gradually clearing by 1:00p.

Skies: Fog in the AM; partly cloudy and clearing in the afternoon.