This past Tuesday morning, 02 Feb., I fished with Gary Moore, his wife, Margaret, and their friend, Kirk Bateman, all U.S. Army veterans, all members of Eastside Baptist Church, and all residents of Copperas Cove.
Margaret poured it on landing 2 at a time when we made our final push to boat 100 fish or more this trip.
From left: Gary, Margaret, and Kirk. The average white bass we’ve been catching on Stillhouse this winter has far exceeded the average size of the white bass we’d been catching over on Belton up until the week after Christmas.
During their time in the military, Gary served in various combat arms roles, Margaret served in positions involving chemical, biological and radiological weapons, and Kirk worked in the supply field.
I first got to meet Gary in person at the recent Central Texas Boat Show where he “trolled” by my booth. He’s a regular reader of my “Guide Lines” newspaper column in the Sunday edition of the Killeen Daily Herald, and wanted to put a face with the name and talk fishing. Since he, his wife, and friend Kirk are all retired with very flexible schedules, he asked that I just look for “fishy weather” and give him a call, preferably on a weekday.
When, on Saturday evening, I looked at the forecast from the National Weather Service and saw a wind shift in advance of a cold front scheduled for Tuesday, I liked what I saw, gave Gary a call, and we put the trip on the books.
The weather forecast held true and we awoke to a 54F, breezy morning. The only drawback was the very clear skies instead of the preferred grey cloud cover, but this simply meant we’d have to fish deep this day.
There was very little early morning gull action. In fact, our best fishing, which came from around 8:30 to 10:30a, came on a fish-laden structural feature we found strictly with sonar. This one area, fished in four “short-hops”, gave up 70 fish.
We experienced a bit of a lull from 10:30 to 11:00 and were planning on wrapping up at 11:15, but, as the wind increased, a large flock of Forster’s terns began to feed over open water in 53-54′. The fish were stacked from bottom, upwards to within 20 feet of bottom. These fish were not very aggressive, so very slow, intentional jigging methods were required. Once we zeroed in on what they preferred, we put another 31 fish in the boat over the next 75 minutes.
We wrapped up our trip around 12:30, about 5 minutes after the birds stopped working and the catch rate dropped to a point where we all realized the party was over. The Cove crew boated exactly 101 fish on this trip, including 1 freshwater drum, 6 largemouth bass, and 94 white bass, of which all but about 4 were well beyond the legal minimum of 10 inches. Our white bass averaged right at 12″ with several approaching 14″.
This cold-water period vertical jigging using a sonar-intensive approach for deep, heavily congregated fish will typically last until mid-March. If this is “up your alley” give me a ring before then and we’ll get you on the water.
TALLY = 101 FISH, all caught and released
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TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:
Start Time: 7:15a
End Time: 12:30p
Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 54F
Water Surface Temp: 53.8F
Wind Speed & Direction: W7 at trip’s start, increasing to W12-13 by end
Sky Conditions: Fair, cloudless skies.
Water Level: 622.67 with 622.0 being full pool. 0.07 feet of water was released in the last 24 hours.
Other: GT= 30
Wx Snapshot:
AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:
**Area 1689 – vertical jigging for fish found on sonar with initial assist by birds (~7 gulls)
**Area 1055 – vertical jigging for fish found on sonar only
**Area 074 – vertical jigging for fish found under active flock of ~20 terns
Bob Maindelle
Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service
254.368.7411 (call or text)
Website: www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com
E-mail: Bob@HoldingTheLineGuideService.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/bobmaindelle