This evening I fished with Jeremy and Paula C., both from the Cheyenne, Wyoming area.
Jeremy and Paula were so excited to boat a new species of fish. Paula landed her first white bass and told me “Mission accomplished! I did what I came to Texas to do!”
Jeremy and Paula are a really nice couple, married 15 years. They enjoy the outdoors together in a number of ways including fishing (mainly in creeks and rivers), bowhunting, and working with their 5 dogs.
It is their love of dogs that brought them here to Texas. Jeremy drove Paula 800+ miles to drop her off at a canine handlers’ course in Florence, TX, where she’ll gain the skills and qualifications necessary to train all manner of working dogs. Jeremy works in industrial refrigeration repair and needed a little break, so, while they were down this way, they chose to pursue a species of fish they’d never before had the opportunity to catch.
Our deep bite (which I’ve been counting on all week on my afternoon trips) definitely got softer as the week went by and the water warmed. We started our day off checking out quite a number of deeper 30-45 foot areas, only to find small schools of fish occupying these areas. We found 5 fish at Area 986 and moved for lack of additional action. Same thing at Area 1063 (5 fish), and Area 1027 (6 fish).
So, we headed shallower earlier than I had headed shallow all week and while the skies were still bright with direct sun (around 5:45p).
We headed first to Area 103 and found fish loosely schooled together here in 17-20 feet of water. I buoyed them, backed off a cast’s length, and we worked them over with bladebaits, boating 34 white bass, 1 crappie, and 1 drum in about 90 minutes time. These fish responded best to a horizontal retrieve, but, on occasion hit a vertically smoked bait.
After this school dissipated, we found 2 other tightly bunched schools of white bass in 12-14 feet of water, but they were on the move. We stuck with a flatline trolling regimen to try to intersect with these moving schools for our last 30 minutes on the water or so and did manage to boat 5 more white bass on trolled Wiggle Warts.
Good luck to you as you go “back to school” Paula. I hope your hairy students are all cooperative!!
TALLY = 44 fish, all caught and released.
TODAY’S CONDITIONS:
Start Time: 3:45p
End Time: 8:05p
Air Temp: 77F at trip’s start.
Water Surface Temp: 64.1F
Wind: Winds were S14-16, tapering to S11-12.
Skies: Skies were partly cloudy.