This past Monday morning, August 1st, I fished once again with Joe Oliver (who came out with me last Friday with a different batch of grandkids), this time accompanied by his son, Cory Oliver, and three of Joe’s grandchildren, Bo & Ben Pugh, and Cullen Oliver.
All the kids hooked up this morning! Back row from left: Cory Oliver and Joe Oliver. Front row from left: Cullen Oliver (6), Beau Pugh (2), and Ben Pugh (8).
Ben landed the largest fish of the trip this morning — a hybrid striper half as long as he is!
Because a contingent of the Oliver family was headed to The Woodlands later this day to visit grandma, our trip was planned for three hours instead of the normal four, which, with such young kids aboard worked out just right. We broke the trip down into three segments, downrigging, casting/smoking, and bait fishing for catfish.
The morning action started off a bit slow today, but right around 7:50, some light top water began which clued us in as to the location of a sizable congregation of feeding fish. We capitalized on this find by catching fish using downriggers, and by casting slabs to fish feeding on top water, as well as using slabs throughout the water column. Thanks to the fact that fish were so aggressive, they were found from top to bottom for a short span of time. When this action settled down, we did a bit more slab work to add a few white bass and a few hybrid to our count, and then devoted the last 50 minutes or so to setting up with bait for blue catfish.
Everything we tried this morning panned out, and we scarcely went five or six minutes without at least a single fish being hooked and landed.
We wrapped up the fishing by 9:40 with a grand total of 44 fish landed for our efforts today.
TALLY = 44 fish, all caught and released
Wx Snapshot:
TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:
Start Time: 6:30a
End Time: 9:40a
Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 77F
Water Surface Temp: 85.2F
Wind Speed & Direction: S9-12
Sky Conditions: 10% white clouds on a fair sky. Unobscurred sunrise at 7:06.
Water Level: ~8.3 feet high and falling ~ 0.65 feet per day with a flow of ~5,200 cfs
GT = 105
AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:
**Area 1656/1657 downrigging, topwater, smoking
**Area 216/1663 smoking
**Area 812/1271 blue catfish on fresh, dead shad
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