This morning I fished with (nearly) 11 year old Miss Abby L. of Virginia and her “Grandpa T”.
What a way to start the day — Abby boated this 11.75 pound smallmouth buffalo on a 3/4 oz. TNT slab.
Our goal was to put Abby on hybrid striped bass so she could attempt to land one unassisted. Abby realized her goal 5 times over today. This hybrid, the last one she boated, was a tough fighter, forcing her to swap hands with the rod a few times during the fight, but, as you can see, she came out on top.
Abby and her big brother, Scotty, flew into Austin around 8pm last night, went to bed after mid-night and Abby was up and at ’em sufficiently early to arrive at 5:45a for our 6:00a trip. Scotty opted for the “sleep until well after 10am” plan.
Abby is quite an accomplished outdoorswoman already. She is essentially fearless, she’s focused, she knows her fish, she casts far and accurately, she is patient when patience is required, she shoots a mean bow, and she can eat a 1/2 pound “Crow’s” burger in 6 minutes flat!
Abby has really been looking forward to this trip to her grandpa’s — so much so that she went into “camel mode” as her mom has termed it. Camel mode occurs when one gets so fixated on an outdoor goal (i.e. catching a hybrid striped bass) that all else (eating, drinking, peeing, personal hygiene, and other optional life activities) are tuned out in the relentless pursuit of that goal.
Indeed, Abby’s goal was to catch a hybrid striped bass without assistance during the fight. With this in mind, I came prepared for topwater, for downrigging, and for fishing with live shad. We searched far and wide for fish, finally encountering some very loosely congregated fish down around 28-31 feet over a deeper bottom in the vicinity of Area 472. As soon as we got our baits down, we saw solid fish returns on sonar near bottom, so, I moved all of our bait rods to one side of the boat so Abby and I could work slabs off the other side. Our first hookup of the morning came on the slab when an 11.75 pound buffalo gave chase and struck. Just minutes later, Abby’s goal was realized when our first hybrid of the morning took a live shad suspended at around 26 feet. The reel’s clicker went off, Abby hit the handle, the rod bent deeply, she pried it out of the rod holder and the unassisted fight was on. She handled the fish well, keeping it out of the other lines and the trolling motor, and soon brought it to the surface and kept it there for me to net. We went on to catch a few more hybrid here on live shad as well, but the bite was very tentative.
We pulled up stakes and gave downrigging a try for a while both for variety’s sake, and to get our baits moving horizontally and cover some ground in hopes of finding some better concentrations of fish that we could once again put baits in front of. We found little, picking up just a single white bass that way.
We then headed to between Areas 512 and 815 and spent the remainder of the morning here. Again, the bite was tentative. We drew one strike for every 20-30 fish we saw enter our bait spread beneath the boat. We added a few more hybrid and a mess of blue cat to our tally here. By around 11:25 we could tell the already tough bite was getting even tougher, so, we decided to head on in (for a Crow’s Burger, of course).
Belton is often a tough nut to crack for several weeks after the threadfin shad spawn concludes and before the water stratifies and a thermocline develops, and this year seems to be no exception. Bait, patience, and a good attitude are required. We had all 3 on board today.
TALLY = 14 FISH, all caught and released
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TODAY’S CONDITIONS:
Start Time: 6:00a
End Time: 11:25a
Air Temp: 76F at trip’s start.
Water Surface Temp: 83.4F
Wind: Winds were SSE12 at sunrise and stayed within ~2mph of that the entire trip.
Skies: Skies were fair and cloudless.