This morning’s trip had an international flair to it!! I welcomed aboard a 24 year old young man from Seoul, South Korea, by the name of Seong Jin Park (he goes by “Jin”). Jin is attending the University of Texas and has relatives in Killeen. Jin was accompanied by Dick C. of Killeen. Dick and his wife, Chun An, have opened their home to Jin on the weekends so he has someone familiar to associate with while he is away from his family and home. Jin had never gone fishing before today, but quickly made up for lost time!!
Jin shows off our biggest fish of the trip, and his first largemouth bass ever.
Once Dick got the hang of “bite detection”, there was no slowing him down; the fish on the left measured 14.50 inches.
Jin is learning English by immersion. His vocabulary is at more than survival level, but many of the terms I use on the boat are technical and/or fishing specific, so I found I need to speak and demonstrate so Jin could appreciate what he needed to do to be successful — we quickly found common ground as evidenced by his results.
We began our day where I left off last night, with some flatlining at Area 116. We quickly boated 3 white bass here on twin Rip Shads and then left when the action died as the skies brightened and the fish left the shallows.
We searched about and spotted some limited but useful gull activity right on top of Area 745. I headed us to the area of interest, ran sonar to confirm the presence of fish, buoyed the fish I found, and then we worked the fish with TNT 180 slabs (3/8 oz. in white) for over an hour, boating exactly 30 fish including white bass of all sizes and one largemouth going 17.5 inches and weighing 2.75 pounds. Eventually these fish lost interest and moved on as the skies continued to brighted, thus pushing the fish out of this 17-18 foot water.
We moved on to Area 100 in 21-26 feet of water and worked hard to pry 10 fish off the bottom here on slabs. The fish just weren’t packed in this area so we left right after the initial strong bite softened.
We spent the remainder of our trip in the vicinity of Areas 103/746. Fish were a bit deeper on this breakline, down at the 32-35 foot level versus the 25-27 foot level they’ve been at the last few times out, but they were there in strength and bit well. We landed exactly 46 fish off this area including white bass of all sizes up to 14.5 inches, and Jin lost a big largemouth that was ghosting the smaller whites looking for a big meal.
Jin is very electronically savvy; Dick reported to me that within minutes of receiving electronic copies of the digital photos I took of our trip, those photos had reached friends and family on the other side of the globe and much excited chatter was made of the young man’s catch.
TALLY = 89 FISH, all caught and released
Today’s Conditions:
Start Time: 7:15a
End Time: 12:30p
Starting Air Temp: 62F
Water Surface Temp: 61.4F
Wind: S9 increasing to S13
Skies: 100% grey overcast at trip’s start, gradually clearing to 20% clouds by trip’s end.