This evening I fished with a retired couple from the San Antonio area, The Rowland’s. Both Gary and Linda are U.S. military veterans. They had some other Spring Break travel plans fall through and wanted to spend some time in the outdoors so they gave me a ring and we made a nice evening of it. Both had some fishing experience, mostly from the bank, and the experiences they had fishing from boats was in very different environments (downrigging in the Pacific and fishing from a drift boat in the Northwest), so, we spent a good bit of time at dockside before launching just getting some basic techniques down, such as jigging and smoking with a slab.

Gary and Linda “grip and grin” at their catch of healthy white bass taken on slabs this evening.

High winds were a factor today, with sustained winds over 16 mph and gusts over 20 making boat control a bit of an issue, but we took lemons and made some lemonade.

Our first stop came at Area 546. I saw some so-so sonar readings on bottom near a breakline topping out at 25 feet. We stopped and put our dockside lessons to use and just worked out the kinks here. We managed to boat 4 smallish white bass, but, this was very useful as both now appreciated what a bite felt like, how to adjust the height of their lure, how to maintain a vertical orientation for line control, and more — all fundamental to success.

We moved on after the few fish in this area lost interest in our presentations and again connected with fish in the vicinity of Areas 103 and 549. This breakline adjacent to the channel has really turned on recently and produced consistently. Fish were initially hugging bottom, but, as the evening progressed, rose higher in the water column. I suspect that due to the low flow in the Lampasas that there was actually some mid-depth, open water spawning action occuring here, as several females were dripping eggs and many males were leaking milt. We spent the majority of our 4 hour trip here on these fish, working them over with 3/8 oz. white TNT 180’s, boating a total of 38 from an area perhaps 25 yards in diameter. Once we lost contact with fish, we’d move in the same vicinity closely studying sonar until I reestablished contact with bottom-hugging fish, we then jig for these fish, catch a few, and the process would repeat. This area stop yielding fish around 7:00pm.

We check out a shallow water area to no avail, and then spent the last 25 minutes of the trip or so flatlining with a Wart/Rip Shad combination near Area 116. We actually boated 4 fish, but had several hooked that managed to struggle free despite our attempts to baby them in using the whippy crankbait rods I have dedicated for this trolling duty.

In all we put 42 fish in the boat this evening.

Gary sent me a nice note after the trip letting me know that Linda didn’t stop talking about their experience for a day and a half following our outing, and that he was appreciative of the good referral I gave him to Schoepf’s BBQ over in Belton.

TALLY = 42 FISH, all caught and released

Today’s Conditions:

Start Time: 3:45p

End Time: 8:10p

Starting Air Temp: 79F

Water Surface Temp: 62.4F

Wind: S16-18 at trip’s start with higher gusts decreasing to S12 by trip’s end

Skies: Partly cloudy at 205 coverage.