I took a down day today and fished solo to do an exploratory trip to the lower end of Stillhouse today. Typically the end of April/beginning of May brings a time of transition to deeper water, the formation of a thermocline, and as a result, the fish tend to suspend more and remain deeper, on average, than during the preceding 2 months or so.

This is a crop of a Lowrance HDS-10 screenshot of the last area (Area 775) I fished today. The red mass overlying the brown bottom is a densely packed school of white bass literally carpeting the bottom. The black and white StructureScan image confirms this with greater detail.

This is a Lowrance HDS-10 screenshot of the same area above, zoomed in to the maximum extent on both colored sonar and on black and white SturctureScan. The key here is “target separation” which is the sonar’s ability to distinguish between targets that are very close to one another and avoid “lumping” them as if they were a single target. Due to the configuration of the StructureScan’s sound pattern, it excels at target separation and image clarity. Note 4 distinct grey “arches” showing 4 separate fish very close together on the black and white display.

I did my homework last night by going back over a number of years’ worth of my own blog entries and recalling the Area numbers where I’d found fish under similar circumstances in this season over the years’ past. I made a “hit list” of areas to check out on sonar as a starting point for this morning’s trip.

This morning I launched and began simply observing — observing sonar, the water’s surface, bird life, for the odor of fish over the water’s surface — anything that would point to fish, be it gamefish or the bait they require to feed upon.

Before long, I caught sight of an osprey acting “fishy”. I cut the engine and drifted from a distance away and watched as it made 3 attempted dives toward the water’s surface, but pulled up short each time. That meant schooling fish! I quickly got to the area of the action between Area 177 and the shore to the S. of it, cut the outboard, dropped the trolling motor and moved in for a look with rod in hand. I found very aggressive white bass in schools of 25-50 fish per school feeding at and near the surface on shad approximately 1.5 inches long. There was much more going on beneath the surface than on it. I geared up with a Cork Rig and quickly realized these fish were willing to hit a much larger offering than that as they struck at the cork instead of the teaser behind it!! I switched over to a Spook and stuck with it until the action left the surface, at which time I switched over to a silver/silver Reefrunner Cicada. In the first 70 minutes of light I caught 51 fish (exactly 50 whites and 1 largemouth), and left these fish while they were still biting to seek out other shallow fish while the action was on.

This bite cooled off a bit as the sun rose but the winds stayed calm. In fact, I never saw another gamefish break water all morning following this sunrise blitz. I waited through a bit of a lull until around 9:10 when a stiff S. breeze began at 9mph, then steadily ramped up to 20mph by 12:30pm and leveled off at that high velocity.

As soon as that wind kicked in the fish put on the feed bag. This action was no doubt enhanced by a poor feed yesterday with its light N to NNE breeze, bright skies and near calm conditions.

When I graphed the first area I’d hoped to fish after the wind began, I saw there were fish really packed into this area (Area 773) and suspected a hard feed was about to get underway. So, I decided to attempt to catch just 10 fish really quickly at multiple areas to determine, while this “Window” was open, what deepwater areas the fish are and are not using right now. The results of that effort are as follows:

Area 773 – 10 white bass came fast and easy, left them biting and moved

Area 774 – 10 white bass came fast and easy, left them biting and moved

Area 131 – 3 white bass, fish turned off and I had to work for them, so I left to search for more aggressive fish

Area 103 – 10 white bass came fast and easy, left them biting and moved

Area 537 – thought I saw whites — turned out to be crappie — boated 1 and left

Area 547/765 – 10 white bass caught, but had to work for the last 3 which made me think the morning bite was about to taper out

Area 775 – 14 white bass caught, the first 7 came easy, then I had to jig for the last 7 and knew I’d seen the best of it by now — packed it up and headed home for lunch.

In all, I boated 109 fish today and came away with confidence in knowing where the fish are for the sake of getting clients on top of fish over at least the next 2 weeks or so.

TALLY = 109 FISH, all caught and released.

Today’s Conditions:

Start Time: 6:40a

End Time: 12:15p

Starting Air Temp: 56F

Water Surface Temp: 73.3F

Wind: SSE4 at sunrise and staying that way until just after 9am, then turning due S. and going immediately to 9, steadily climbing to 20mph by noon.

Skies: Bright, clear, and dry.