This afternoon I welcomed aboard mother and daughter Gladys and Deb N. Gladys is a long-time local resident, and Deb was in town from Ennis, TX, visiting her folks. Dad (Charles) decided to treat the ladies to a fishing trip.
Deb holds the first of several fish she caught exceeding the 5 pound mark this afternoon.
Not to be outdone, Gladys came up with her own lunker — a 6 1/8 pound largemouth. This fish looked like it had been around a long time judging from the appearance of its eyes and wear and tear on its fins and lower jaw.
Today’s trip started and ended with a bang, but we had a bit of a lull in the middle. While I was waiting for my guests to arrive, I checked over a few areas with sonar and was fortunate to pin down what would turn out to be a school of hybrid near Area 817 on a breakline going from 25 to 31 feet. The fish were at the deeper end of the breakline (which often means relative inactivity). I marked these fish, picked the ladies up, and returned to fish for what I’d seen earlier on sonar.
When we positioned over these fish, they’d moved upslope a bit (a positive sign). Instead of opting for bait, I had the ladies smoke 3/8 and 3/4 oz. TNT 180 slabs over these fish. Deb drew blood first boating a keeper hybrid on a 3/8 oz. slab. Seeing now that we were dealing with hybrid, I changed the ladies over to 3/4 oz. slabs, and, once again, Deb hooked up. After going for a while without a strike on the artificials, I then decided to go with bait and the sluggish fish reacted well to the presentation. We boated 10 more fish including 2 short hybrid, 1 channel cat, 1 largemouth bass, and 6 keeper hybrid. After about 75 minutes on these fish, they turned off and we went on an unsuccessful search for fish elsewhere, save one white bass taken on a shad at Area 437.
Around 7:30, I decided to have another look at Area 817. As I motored in, there the fish were appearing just as they did when I first found them prior to our 4:30pm start time. This time we went with live bait as our first option and that turned out to be a good choice. Over the next 90 minutes we baited only 4 rods due to the size of the fish we were catching making tangled lines a probability due the hybrids’ propensity to run horizontally through the water column. During this window of time we boated 15 more fish including a 6.125 pound largemouth for Gladys, 2 short hybrid, and 13 keeper hybrid. The fish bit right up to the cover of darkness and then knocked off.
TALLY = 28 FISH, all caught and released
TODAY’S CONDITIONS:
Start Time: 4:30p
End Time: 9:10p
Air Temp: 93F at trip’s start.
Water Surface Temp: ~82.8F
Wind: Winds were SSE 9-12 the entire trip.
Skies: Skies were clear, bright, and dry.