This afternoon I fished with Ransom and Phyllis O. of the Austin area. The couple celebrated their 43rd wedding anniversary this week. Phyllis took Ransom to a show in Austin on Thursday, and Ransom brought Phyllis out fishing today!
Phyllis caught the trip lunker today — this 2.25 pound fish was mixed in with a school of white bass down around 55 feet.
Still dating after 43+ years!!.
Weather played a huge role in our trip today. As we began, it was nearly 63F, windless, bright, and sunny (all bad for fishing, but nice to be outdoors in). By the end of the trip, it was 5 degrees cooler, blowing a near-gale, and cloudy grey (with the fish in overdrive!). We caught our fish in the happy medium between the two extremes.
Fishing was pretty straightforward this afternoon — we found fish near the old river channel, vertical jigged to check their interest level, stayed if the fish warranted, or departed to find greener pastures if the fish were lazy.
We found fish at two distinct areas today. We found our first patch of fish right on Area 074 in ~27 feet of water. We made 3 “short hops” in this area to try to stir up some fish. Each time we let our slabs down we’d catch 3-5 fish, then they’d shut down on us indicating very passive fish not really in the eating mood. We boated 13 fish here in about 40 minutes and decided to keep searching.
Our next stop came in ~55 feet of water at Area 946. The fish were oriented to the windward side of this feature. I dropped a buoy right on them, circled back and hovered atop these fish for nearly 2 solid hours. The fishing started a big sluggishly, but, as the wind increased and as the cloud cover increased, the fish continued to turn on more and more. We boated a total of 44 fish off of this one area. Around 4:30, the wind shifted due N. and increased sharply by ~6 mph. This caused the fish to back off their intense feed a bit, but, the fishing was still better than when the calmer, bright conditioned had prevailed.
By 5:00p, we’d boated a total of 57 fish with willing fish beneath us still interested, but, with dropping temps, a setting sun, and increasing winds, the comfort level and fun factor was waning, and the couple made a good decision to be content with what they’d enjoyed catching and called it a day right then. So, in about 3 hours’ time, we’d managed 55 white bass and 2 largemouth for our efforts. Every last fish today came on a TNT180 slab in 3/4 oz. fished either by vertical jigging, easing, or slow smoking.
TALLY = 57 fish, all caught and released
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TODAY’S CONDITIONS:
Start Time: 2:00p
End Time: 5:10p
Air Temp: 61F at trip’s start, further dropping to 57F.
Water Surface Temp: ~55-57F
Wind: Winds were NNW2 increasing to NNW12, then shifting to N18.
Skies: Skies were clear on the NNW wind, then grew cloudier on the winds shift around 4:30p