This past Saturday morning, July 16th, I fished with “Grandpa” Fred Luther, his son, Erik Luther, and Erik’s two sons, 9-year-old Hayden, and 7-year-old Josh. Erik and his family live in the Austin area, and Fred traveled down from north central Missouri for a visit.
The Luther boys — from left Erik, Hayden, and Josh with a sampling of the catch of shallow water panfish that provided all of this morning’s action.
My hope was to offer some variety given the boys’ age and the likelihood of disinterest developing over keeping at the same thing for very long whiles. I came prepared for topwater, but no surface action materialized. I came prepared for vertical work with slabs, but no white bass were to be found active and congregated near bottom. I came prepared to downrig, but schools of suspended white bass were also hard to come by. I came prepared to fish for sunfish up shallow, and the “sunnies” did indeed cooperate.
After putting in about 50 minutes’ worth of effort searching unsuccessfully for white bass, we headed up shallow where rock, weed, and wood could all be found in close proximity and dropped our ultralight rigs in amidst the cover hoping for a response. The response was overwhelming. For a solid 75 minutes the boys landed sunfish after sunfish of various species (bluegill, green, and longear) in less than 4 feet of water until I began to see their attention and good technique began to decrease.
At this point I made another move to again try to search out some white bass, and again we struck out in a number of areas which traditionally hold fish this time of year. A few things are for sure: the lack of wind did us no favors today, and the abundance of young-of-the-year baitfish present in the lake right now puts a lot of natural competition out there for our unnatural baits.
After about an hour’s worth of gunning for whites in 6 different areas and still not even seeing enough on sonar to be hopeful about landing white bass, we returned to sunfishing in two additional area so as to close the trip out on a positive, productive note for the boys. We once again headed up shallow and continued to score on sunfish, and even got a few juvenile largemouth bass in the mix using the slipfloat rigs.
When all was said and done, the boys had boated 51 fish for their efforts. The day did not come together as I had anticipated, but coming prepared to use a variety of tactics certainly paid off this morning.
TALLY = 51 fish, all caught and released
Wx Snapshot:
TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:
Start Time: 6:40a
End Time: 11:10a
Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 79F
Water Surface Temp: 85.2F
Wind Speed & Direction: Light & variable
Sky Conditions: Thin grey cloud cover the entire trip up to the last 40 minutes when rapid clearing occurred.
Water Level: ~5.56 feet high and falling ~0.4 feet per day with a flow of ~1,850 cfs
GT = 30
AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:
**Areas 200, 667, 1786 for sunfish on slipfloats
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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