I wasn’t real sure what last night’s wet cold front’s arrival was going to do to the fishing, but I did know there was only one way to find out — to get out there and fish!  I have found over the years that weather which would normally kill a bite (like a wet coldfront) will scarely impact fish in the late spring as water temperature are rising and the fish population’s metabolism is increasing.  With high winds, damp conditions, and a cool 57F temperature at 7am, we had the lake to ourselves, literally.

Although Kim is an experienced fisherman, most of his recent experience has been in tournament fishing on Lake Alan Henry for largemouth bass and spotted bass.  Kim had never caught a hybrid striped bass before today.

As we got going the windspeed was pegged at 17-18 mph from the NNW with higher gust.  At our first area, we had occasional swells breaking over the bow forcing me to manually bail water from time to time, but the fishing was hot for the first hour.  As soon as we got in position, got baits down, and got chum working for us, the fish responded well.  After we hooked the first fish and got the resident population of fish stirred up, the entire school fired up and we were catching so many fish so quickly that we had to drop back to 3, and occasionally 2, rods.

The first two hours of fishing were the best today with a lull from 9 to 10am, then a little resurgence from 10 to 11am as we moved to a different area.

We wound up catching a total of 49 fish today.  We had a mixture of legal and short hybrid, white bass, and blue catfish.  The first 24 fish we boated were all keeper hybrid.  After the initial strong bite at both of the areas we fished today, we found smaller fish would feed after a “run” of the larger, more aggressive hybrid were done feeding.

TALLY = 59 FISH, all caught and released