Although making up a small percentage of the overall catch over these past 3 weeks, nice hybrid are certainly catchable on artificials.

The majority of our catch consisted of typical Belton Lake white bass running right at 12″, mixed with short hybrid stripers.

Bill is a retired teacher from the Edna, TX, area who also served 2 years as a Texas Game Warden back in the 1960’s.  He is 79 years old.  Larry is a road builder turned stay-at-home dad to two special need children he and his wife adopted later in life.  The men spent the night at the family farm in Bertram, TX, to make this morning’s drive a bit shorter.

We enjoyed balmy temperatures and abundant cloud cover, but also had to endure the high winds today, all caused by compressional warming as the atmosphere over us began to get “squeezed” by tomorrow’s approaching cold front.

The fishing was consistent today for our middle 2.5 hours, with a start that tapered up nicely, and a finish that tapered out over the last 50 minutes.

We vertical jigged all day today, adding in very little “easing” or “smoking” tactics, as the active fish were primarily glued to the bottom.

As they did yesterday, the fish showed a leaning toward short feeding spurts, then shutting down, thus requiring that we move regularly to stay in touch, although the fish did go a bit longer on average during these feeds than the 5-6 fish spurts of yesterday’s trip.  We fished 4 general areas today, but made a number of hops at each location to stay on the fish, each time moving a few yards and stopping when sonar lit up with a new batch of fish.

I was concerned a bit when I learned that both men had a long black bass fishing background, as that usually means counterproductive habits that are hard to break and which cost us fish, but, to their credit they were both able to follow the gameplan, present their slabs well, and they were rewarded for their attention to detail.

We worked white, 3/4 oz. TNT 180 slabs near bottom today, occasionally assisted by birds, starting up shallow early in 18-20 feet of water, and ending the day out deeper in ~35 feet of water.

If you are thinking about booking a trip, as always, I recommend a weekday morning for your best shot at fish without the weekend pressure.  My “pick of the week” for this coming week (18-23 Nov.), based on tonight’s forecast, would be Wednesday, as we see a return to southerly winds following the cold front due in tomorrow.

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