This morning I fished with Chris M. and Comptus D., both serving our nation as members of the U.S. Army Signal Corps currently assigned to an explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) unit on Ft. Hood.
Comptus (L) and Chris (R) were consistent in quickly and accurately casting to surface-feeding white bass. This allowed them to take take full advantage of the potential the fish offered us today as they fed long and hard on shad in the upper third of the water column.
We regularly witnessed hooked fish being chased by multiple schoolmates. In this instance, one of those schoolmates took a swipe at the lure in his hooked schoolmate’s mouth and also got hooked.
Our first stop this morning came at Area 057/061. The low-light, early morning largemouth action here was significantly reduced over the past several mornings. I attributed that to the cloud cover in the east “buffering” our sudden brightening of the skies that seems to have been a light-related trigger for largemouth of late. We stayed in the area for about 90 minutes and steadily had “boils” to cast to, but they were well-spaced both time-wise and distance-wise. We picked up a total of 8 fish and moved on.
Our next stop at Area 205 saw the most aggressive topwater action I’ve seen from white bass in a long time, and certainly in this run of 9 excellent fishing days. We enjoyed constant topwater action for 2 full hours. Both fellows started with silver bladebaits (the Reef Runner “Cicada” in 3/8 oz., silver), then Chris got adventurous and began throwing a Rebel Pop-R and did well on it, too. Comptus kept right on going with his “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” philosophy and landed fish after fish on his Cicada. Basically any timely, well-placed cast got responded to positively. Many times we witnessed a hooked fish at boatside being accompanied by 5-6 other schoolmates aggressively pursuing after the lure in the hooked fish’s mouth. On one occasion, one of the pursuing fish got a bit greedy and also got hooked — two fish landed on one lure!
Chris said it well when he mentioned that this experience was no place for a new fisherman — they’d simply get spoiled and think it was this easy all the time. He noted that you’d need to have been out regularly enough to know you usually have to work to find fish in order to appreciate how special today’s conditions were.
After the fish vacated the upper third of the water column, we decided to try another technique for variety’s sake. This took us over to Area 458/1135. We began downrigging, were successful at that, and, as we approached the western end of this topographic feature, saw fish stacked up well in the lower third of the water column in 18-24 feet of water. With the fairly bright, and only slightly breezy conditions, I decided to try to saturate the area with horizontally cast bladebaits worked “lift-drop” style. We picked up both white bass and largemouth doing so, and rounded out our fish count at 168 here. It became apparent that as the winds lightened and the skies brightened that the fish had done about all they were to do this morning, so, around 11:15 we called it a day and headed back in.
TALLY = 168 FISH, all caught and released
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TODAY’S CONDITIONS:
Start Time: 6:15a
End Time: 11:00a
Air Temp: 74F at trip’s start.
Water Surface Temp: 83-84F
Wind: Winds were SSW6-8.
Skies: Partly cloudy at 50% on a hazy sky.
Bob Maindelle
Holding the Line Guide Service
254-368-7411
www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com
Salado, Texas