This second day of Spring Break 2013 I was joined in the evening by Andy and Trent M. of N. Austin.
Trent took big fish honors tonight with this 4.5 pound largemouth vertical jigged from out of 55 feet of water amidst a huge school of white bass.
Andy and Trent landed this pair of schoolie largemouth just seconds apart from a deep rockpile in 50 feet of water.
We zigged when we should have zigged this afternoon. We left the boat launch and were literally into fish less than 4 minutes later as the sonar showed the bottom over top of Area 1039/981 littered with fish. We got baits in the water, slabs on bottom, and up came the fish. At this first stop, we pulled 17 fish in very short order before the fish quit kind of abruptly. I’ve seen this on occasion when a school of big predator fish (longnose gar or outsized largemouth) come in and crash the party. Regardless, what started quickly ended just as quickly and we were off again to find fish.
Our next success came at Area 946 in about 55 feet of water. Again, as I idled over the area with sonar on, the bottom was just crawling with white bass here. These were very active, aggressive fish as indicated by their willingness to rise up to our falling slabs as we lowered our baits, and by the fishes’ tendency to follow hooked schoolmates almost 2/3’s of the way to the surface before turning back for the safety of the bottom. Since these fish were a bit smallish, we agreed we’d put 20 in the boat and then go looking elsewhere. This took all of about 7 minutes and we were on our way looking in some similar deepwater areas, but came up clean, so, we returned to Area 946 to fish until the shadows were long enough to lead me to believe that we could find some fish up shallow to cast for. By the time we left, we’d brought our tally up to 61 fish.
With about 30 minutes to go until sunset, we headed uplake and looked in some shallower (<25') areas for schooled white bass, but, tonight found little. With the air getting colder, Trent's sweatshirt seemed to be getting thinner, so, we called it a great afternoon with 61 fish boated and headed for the dock and some burgers on the grill.
TALLY = 61 fish, all caught and released
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TODAY’S CONDITIONS:
Start Time: 4:35a
End Time: 7:45p
Air Temp: 68F at trip’s start
Water Surface Temp: ~56-57F
Wind: Winds were ESE13
Skies: Skies were fair and cloudless.