This (cold) morning I met brothers Mike and Bob H. of the Wassau, Wisconsin, area for a bit of white bass and hybrid fishing on Belton Lake.
Brothers Mike and Bob with two “white icicles” on a tough, post-frontal fishing day.
Mike has transplanted himself to Morgan’s Point, TX, and Bob was just down for a quick visit, so, we were limited to choosing Tuesday (29 mph straight-line winds and falling temperatures as a cold front arrived) or Wednesday (clear, cold, post-frontal high pressure). So, it was “pick the lesser of two evils” and we went with today.
On my traditional check-in call the night before I told Mike two things: dress warm and be prepared to work for every fish we catch. Well, they dressed well and worked hard!!
It seemed everywhere we went (and we covered from west of BLORA to just shy of the Hwy. 36 bridge) was the same story — very few birds, what birds there were were resting, and bait (if if could be found) up high in the water column. When we did happen upon schooled gamefish, they just refused to come off bottom and give us a look. By 11:00am (with a 6:45am start), we’d only boated 2 fish (at Area 1001) in about 24 feet of water.
As we cruised to yet another area around 11:00am, we began to see nature come to life — some terns began to fly and search for food, buzzards began to soar, and we saw deer moving around the lake edge (very unusual for 11am). I felt a window was beginning to open as the stiff NW breeze relented and the sky began to get a bit hazy.
As we idled over Area 1077, for the first time all day I saw schooled gamefish near bottom in a feeding posture, about 5 inches up off the bottom and tightly clustered in 20-22 feet of water. We got on these fish and boated 11 white bass in short order before the small school disbanded and we had to go looking again. These fish came on TNT180’s in white, 3/4 oz.
We connected with one more white bass at Area 327 in 27 feet of water.
Then we got into one final patch of fish which were spread more horizontally at ~27-29 feet deep at Area 1177. We worked our slabs vertically as we had elsewhere, only this time something a bit unusual happened. Bob felt an odd sensation as he jigged and began to reel in his slab. As it reached the surface, I saw it was caught on heavy monofilament line (we were all using braid). So, I reached down to untangle his hook from the line and then began winding the line around my hand when suddenly, IT PULLED BACK!. I kept on winding and it kept on pulling, and, in about 35 seconds we saw a live ~14″ hybrid come to the surface. It was hooked with a large, ~3/0 galvanized hook with a 2 oz. sinker threaded onto the line about 18 inches up. The hook was way down in the fish’s gullet, so, I used diagonal cutting pliers to cut the hook off without causing further harm and we released the hybrid, now free of the extra baggage he’d been towing around for who knows how long. The fish looked plenty healthy enough — I guess he adapted. We picked up 5 more white bass here and that was all she wrote. 6 1/2 hours for 19 fish — (not including the hybrid) — ouch!!
TALLY = 19 fish, all caught and released
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TODAY’S CONDITIONS:
Start Time: 6:45a
End Time: 1:10p
Air Temp: 32F at trip’s start.
Water Surface Temp: ~53F
Wind: Winds were NNW11, tapering to light and variable by noon.
Skies: Skies were bluebird slowly changing to fair by mid-day.