This morning I fished with long-time client Shayne O. who brought as his guests his son, Jayce, as well as his brother-in-law, Dave, and Dave’s son, Drew, both of Denver, CO.
Dave took big fish honors this morning with this 3+ pound hybrid. A resident of Denver, Dave is more accustomed to trout fishing in moving water. This was Dave’s first experience tangling with hybrid stripers.
My crew today: from L to R: Jayce, Shayne, Dave, and Drew.
All four men had prior fishing experience and although the solid numbers that Stillhouse has been producing lately were tempting, we decided to roll the dice for a shot at some hybrid and chose to fish Belton today instead.
Regardless of where one fished today, it was going to be a struggle. Despite a “Wunderground” forecast for winds SE at 6 mph, we had no sustained wind to speak of, and the cloud cover was just marginal.
We were on the water at sunrise and the birds did come off roost and search for gamefish-pushed bait, but they, too, found little on top and headed back to the shoreline hungry this morning.
We caught only one fish via downrigging in the vicinity of Area 1144 during our first hour on the water.
We relocated entirely to Area 955/1152 and, on a gentle slope in about 38 feet of water found a large, mixed school of white bass and hybrid stripers. We caught the majority of our fish in this area over a 75 minute window, taking our tally up to 37. Even though the fish were active for quite a while, they never really got going strong and, even when we did get some fish to pull up off bottom and respond to our presentations, they would settle right back down again. We used a combination of smoking and slabbing here to boat these fish using TNT180 slabs in 3/4 oz.
From here, we moved back over to Area 1144 and put 3 more fish in the boat after idling through and finding a school of about 60-70 fish right on bottom. Again, this school lost interest very quickly and despite plucking fish off bottom, very few other schoolmates gave chase or got excited enough to provoke feeding.
Our final flurry of activity accounted for our last 13 fish of the day. These fish were caught after noontime on Area 717 in over 40 feet of water. These fish first presented on sonar as loosely congregated and tight to bottom. As we began working our slabs among them they tightened up out of curiosity right beneath the boat allowing us to take a few, but, again, the sustained interest just wasn’t there.
By nearly 1pm we knew we were looking at diminishing returns and decided to call it a day right there. This wasn’t all I was hoping for, but I felt we did the best we could with the conditions we faced.
TALLY = 53 Fish, all caught and released, including 4 hybrid bass, 2 freshwater drum, and 47 white bass
TODAY’S CONDITIONS:
Start Time: 7:00a
End Time: 1:00p
Air Temp: 56F at trip’s start.
Water Surface Temp: 64.5F
Wind: Calm at trip’s start, with calm to light and variable puffs for the entirety of the trip.
Skies: High thin clouds until noon, then clearing to partly cloudy at 15%.