This morning I fished with a promising young 7 year old fisherman by the name of Colter B., who was accompanied by his mom, Christy.
This 4.75 pound, 22.25 inch hybrid was Colter’s first fish of the day. It’s hard to improve on that!!
Colter and his mom, Christy, with one of our “short” but feisty hybrid boated this morning
The shad spawn and corresponding white bass and hybrid bite continued today. Netting shad was once again a simple chore so I was more than ready to go when our 7:15am meeting time rolled around.
I believe Colter asked 15 questions in as many seconds aboard my boat, and I tried to answer them all. I found that short answers worked best, as long answers would get me in a backlog as Colter asked more questions while I was still answering his previous ones!
Well, we began our day near Area 1069 over 30′ of water. Fish (which turned out to be hybrid) were suspended just 3-4 feet off bottom here as seen on sonar. We positioned ourselves accordingly and got 4 lines in the water. Less than 4 minutes went by and we had our first strike resulting in boating our first legal hybrid of the day. We were off to a good start! Over the next 30 minutes or so, we would boat 3 more keeper hybrid, but then the bite dried up and we had to go search out more fish.
I tried downrigging a bit just for variety’s sake and to put lines in the water as I slowed swept over potential fish-holding areas with sonar. We came up with little on sonar and on the downriggers and so decided to move locations entirely.
Our next stop came at Area 1076 in about 38 feet of water. We again put our baits down amongst suspended fish, this time coming up 5 turns of the reel handles to get our baits at the depth the fish were using. We had somewhat slow but steady action for nearly 2 hours here and boated an additional 14 fish with at least as many “bite offs” where the fish (typically smaller fish) would either tear off the bait without getting hooked, or would maul the bait thus killing it and requiring the hook be rebaited.
As is typical for most 7 year olds, the novelty of the whole encounter wore off after about 3 hours. Each time a school of fish would pass by and a frenzy of activity would occur, Colter would comment, “This is fun.” Then, after just 6 or 7 minutes of quiet he would comment, “I think I want to go back now.”
By the time all was said and done, Colter landed 18 fish including hybrid striped bass, white bass, and several blue catfish. He did a great job on each one and didn’t give up, even on the big ones that took a while to get to the net.
As we headed back in Colter had already formulated a plan to pick wild blackberries that he’d spotted on his was down to the boat at the start of our trip. On to the next adventure …
TALLY = 18 Fish, all caught and released.
TODAY’S CONDITIONS:
Start Time: 7:15a
End Time: 11:00a
Air Temp:70F at trip’s start.
Water Surface Temp: 72-73F
Wind: Winds were SSE10-11 for the entire trip.
Skies: Skies were overcast but bright grey.
Environmental Note: Elevation was 594.10 ASL releasing water at 111 cfs, with normal full pool at 594.