This third day of Spring Break 2013 I was joined by The Holeman’s — Grandpa Gary, his son, Rick, Rick’s wife, Cylena, and Rick and Cylena’s daughter, McCartney — all from the Midland area where Gary works in the oil business and Rick pastors Cotton Flat Baptist Church.
Fishing was the “main event” for the Holeman’s Spring Break camping trip this year.
Cylena boated the trip’s largest fish today — a nice largemouth that was hanging out with a big school of white bass down around 38 feet.
This was a really fun trip for me today. This was a great, close-knit, godly family who clearly enjoyed being with one another. McCartney, age 13, had never been on a guided trip before, so, this was her first experience with that and, fortunately, the weather and fish both cooperated to make it a memorable one.
As is often the case on bright, cool days, we found our fish up shallow early on, and out deeper later in the trip.
We did a bit of flatline trolling with crankbaits to kick the morning off as it was nearly windless and no birds were yet working. We picked up two nice white bass off of Area 116 and were about to put the baits back out when we spotted some terns working over fish. We headed to them (in the vicinity of Area 557). We got into our vertical jigging mode (which we’d practiced earlier) and began to pull fish. We put an additional 17 fish in the boat here out of 19 feet of water before the action dried up on us.
Next, we headed to Area 055/995 and found a few packs of fish in and around this location in ~25 feet of water. These fish were a bit reluctant, but, we worked them over with the jigging spoons pretty well and wound up leaving this area with a tally of 37 fish.
By 10:30, the SE wind was building and the sun was getting higher, so, I decided to head deep and check some haunts further downlake. We hit paydirt at Area 1039/981 in about 38 feet of water. Over the next 2 hours we caught fish steadily from within a foot of the bottom. There were a number of times when, with 4-5 rods going, we had 2, 3, or 4 fish coming aboard at the same time.
We had fun hitting “milestones” of 50 fish, then 61 (the highest previous fish count for this Spring Break week), then 100, then 122 (double the highest previous fish count for the week), until we finally came to rest at 130. It was almost 1pm and the fish were getting fewer and further between, plus, we discovered Grandma H. had been waiting in the parking lot for over and hour!
So, we took some good photos and headed back in to the boat ramp, with some much more accomplished anglers aboard than we had left the dock with just a few hours earlier.
Thank you all for coming out fishing with me!
TALLY = 130 fish, all caught and released
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TODAY’S CONDITIONS:
Start Time: 7:45a
End Time: 12:45p
Air Temp: 48F at trip’s start
Water Surface Temp: ~57F
Wind: Winds were SE8-9
Skies: Skies were fair and cloudless.