This past Friday morning, April 29th, I fished with Dakota and Brianna Umbarger, both originally from Oregon, and now stationed here at Ft. Hood for Dakota’s first enlistment.
Dakota is serving our country in an Army Aviation unit that specializes in the use of unmanned (drone) aircraft and is currently planning on re-enlisting. He’ll be heading overseas for his first deployment this summer, and so Brianna, who is now 18 weeks pregnant and due in September, will be heading home to be with family in Oregon until Dakota returns to the US.
The fishing picked up a bit today after some off-colored water and the opening of the dam to release accumulated flood water combined to provide a bit of a tough day yesterday.
Most of the Umbarger’s fishing experience came in the form of fishing for trout in the Northwest, so, when our first 3+ pound hybrid hammered Brianna’s bait, it was clear that fishing for hybrid striped bass was a whole new ballgame.
We fished 3 areas in our 4.25 hours on the water. The first two areas were both in 52 feet of water, and the last was in 60 feet of water (bear in mind that the lake is now flooded with 9.4 feet of water above the full pool level).
The first area was our best stop and the longest bite, going right at 2 hours. That stop produced 17 fish, of which 14 were legal (18+ inch) hybrid stripers. The second stop produced 22 fish, including 2 legal hybrid, and a mix of short hybrid and white bass. For our last stop, for variety’s sake, I sought out heavily congregated schools of white bass to jig for using slabs. We quickly added 9 more fish to our tally in just 15 minutes as we closed out our trip.
TALLY: 48 Fish, all caught and released
TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:
Start Time: 7:00a
End Time: 11:15a
Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 72F
Water Surface Temp: 72-73.1F
Wind Speed & Direction: Winds were steady at SSE10-12
Sky Conditions: Moderately thick grey cloud cover the entire trip.
Water Level: Despite running over 5,000 cfs out of the dam, Belton still rose 0.17 feet in the last 24 hours and is now 9.41 feet above full pool.
Other: GT= 20
AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:
**Area 1277/683 — fished bait for 14/17 keeper hybrid
**Area 1152/958 — fished bait for whites, and short and keeper hybrid
**Area 717– jigged with slabs for white bass
