Skirt Alert! — Bryce & Cole Land 85 in a Big Blow

This Saturday afternoon I had the pleasure of fishing with two very well-raised young men from Lorena, Texas.  14-year-old Bryce Strickland was given a fishing gift certificate for Christmas by his grandparents.  Today he invited his lifelong buddy, Cole Pitts, also 14 and also from Lorena, along on the great adventure.

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The boys from Lorena — from left: Cole Pitts and Bryce Strickland.

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Cole proudly displays the largest white bass taken today — just over 14″ from out of 52 feet of water and from out of a school of hundreds of fish slowly on the move toward the Lampasas River for the spawn in March.

And quite an adventure it was, too!  Not only was the wind blowing at 24mph with gusts over 30mph this morning, forcing me to postpone my morning trip, but, as I launched this afternoon about a half-hour before the boys arrived, my new “as-seen-on-TV” Z-Launch bungee cord boat launching gadget failed.  The Z-Launch is supposed to allow you to launch your boat solo without having to climb in the boat nor get wet, and it did work the first 3 times I tried it.  Long story short, I watched my very new center console drift, with Z-Launch fragments still attached, as the now 20mph wind drove it toward the (very rocky) south shore.  I flagged down two nearby bass fishermen and they provided water-taxi service to help me get my act back together.  After all that, we still shoved off 7 minutes early.

As they often do when a dry front approaches, and before the strong northerly winds subside, the fish fed heavily today, with their appetites rising and then falling with the wind speed.

Our first hour was our most productive — 45 fish in 57 minutes.  The second hour was a bit slower, the third hour saw a real lull and gave up only smallish fish, and then the last hour brought with it a low-light sunset bite through 5:45.

Bryce is a freshman basketball player, and Cole is a team manager.  Cole also plays football when that is in season.  The boys were both very coachable, so, when I saw them making mistakes in their technique and pointed it out to them, they quickly responded with positive results.  For example, in the first hour, we were all hooking the same number of fish.  I landed nearly all of mine, Cole was going 50/50, and Bryce was only boating one in every 6 or 7 he hooked.  As I watched him to analyze the problem, I saw he was reeling his fish in very quickly and was literally pulling the hooks out of the fish.  I lightened his drag and had him focus on reducing his reeling speed by half on the next several fish.  This instantly fixed the problem and he landed the majority of the fish he hooked for the remainder of the trip.

When all was said and done, we’d landed a total of 83 white bass, 1 largemouth, and 1 crappie.  This was the deepest I’ve seen fish yet this winter season.  Great numbers of fish were found at 50 feet and deeper today.

TALLY = 85 FISH, all caught and released

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 2:00p

End Time:  6:00p

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 53F

Water Surface Temp:  53.8F

Wind Speed & Direction:  NNW20 at trip’s start, tapering down to NNW11

Sky Conditions:  Clear, bright, cloudless skies as cold front pushed through.

Water Level: 622.47 with 622.0 being full pool.  0.07 feet of water was released in the last 24 hours.

Other: GT= 0

Wx Snapshot:

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AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area  074 – vertical jigging for fish found on sonar with initial assist by birds (~20 Forster’s terns)

**Area 1692 – – vertical jigging for fish found on sonar with initial assist by birds (~12 Forster’s terns)

**Area  1055 – vertical jigging for fish found solely on sonar.  Fish here were smallish.

**Area 1693 – vertical jigging for fish found with initial assist by birds (~9 Forster’s terns)

**Area 745 – vertical jigging for fish found with initial assist by birds (~6 ringbill gulls)

 

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

Website: www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

E-mail: Bob@HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

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