This fifth day of Spring Break 2013 I was joined in the morning by Jim D. of Mississippi, his son-in-law, John Mark, of McGregor,Texas, and Jim’s 12 year old grandson, John (J.J.).
L to R – John Mark, young John, and Grandpa Jim with John’s morning catch. The larger of John’s 2 white bass taped at 14 3/8 inches and was taken on a crankbait.
This trip was Grandpa Jim’s Spring Break treat to his grandson, so, only young John did the fishing today while Dad and Grandpa looked on, encouraged, and cheered.
We got on fish immediately, finding fish active enough to run down a trolled crankbait in shallow water off Area 116. We took 16 fish in this manner before active, diving terns told us to change our game plan.
We therefore headed out to deeper water hoping for big groups of clustered fish, but, only found small packs of 2-5 fish here, there, and everywhere. So, we downrigged for these fish using tandem-rigged Pet Spoons and came up with 5 fish, including a double-double (2 fish on both rods = 4 fish caught at the same time). This action took place between Area 052 and Area 1158. After catching that foursome, we noted a concentration of fish on bottom where we’d caught these from and circled back to try our first vertical jigging of the day; this yielded only 2 fish. By now a nice SSW wind had developed at 8-9 mph.
As the jigging action played out, we headed to Area 1183 and both jigged and cast bladebaits to add another 9 fish to our count, taking our tally up to 32 fish. We’d now fished for 3 1/4 hours and the novelty was wearing off a bit for John, but, he decided he could hang tough for one more stop to try some jigging again in deep water. We made it worth his while, boating a final 4 fish in just about as many minutes, thus giving him a favorable final impression of the day’s adventure.
TALLY = 35 fish, all caught and released
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TODAY’S CONDITIONS:
Start Time: 7:45a
End Time: 11:45a
Air Temp: 58F at trip’s start
Water Surface Temp: ~58F
Wind: Winds were SSW8-10
Skies: Skies were fair and cloudless.