This past Thursday morning, August 4th, I fished a multi-species trip with Mr. James Neason, his wife, Denice, and their two grandchildren, Jaxon (age 12) and Sami Selmans (age 9), all of the Cedar Park, TX, area.

Grandpa James and Jaxon with a nice pair of keeper hybrid.

“Gommy” Denice with a nice hybrid of her own.

And Sami reluctantly posing with the largest of the blue cat she reeled in at the close of our trip.

We started off the morning looking closely for top water action sufficiently strong to stop and cast to, but found none. So, I used sonar to search in water less than 30 feet deep for lowlight feeding activity beneath the surface. We found ample quantities of white bass and hybrid striped bass schooled heavily between 18 and 25 feet deep, often appearing in elongated horizontal schools. We downrigged for these fish using two- and three-armed umbrella rigs equipped with Pet Spoons selected to match the forage size. This action tapered off by about the two hour mark.

We changed locations and hit an area about 24 feet deep after finding white bass holding tight to the bottom, just 1 to 2 foot off of it. We worked chrome slabs for these fish until we were rudely interrupted by fish breaking the surface just behind us. Figuring a bird in hand is worth two in the bush, we drifted back into these top water feeders and cast to them with the same slabs we’d been working vertically. The majority of these fish were school-sized largemouth bass, all in very good shape, and very plump. After the kids’ interest level began to decline around 9:40, we made one last move to target blue catfish.

We headed to an area that has produced blue catfish very consistently for over two weeks now. We put the boat in a hover, put chum down over the side, baited up with shad, got lines down, and started setting hooks hard on blue catfish which were heavily congregated from the bottom and up to 6 feet off of it in about 32 feet of water. Over the next 50 minutes, we put over 20 blue cat in the boat and then wrapped up our morning right at 10:35.

TALLY = 85 fish, all caught and released

 

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 6:30a

End Time:  10:30a

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 78F

Water Surface Temp:  85.2F

Wind Speed & Direction:  S9-12

Sky Conditions: 10% white clouds on a fair sky.   Unobscurred sunrise at 7:10.

Water Level: ~6.73 feet high and falling ~  0.7 feet per day with a flow of ~5,200 cfs

GT = 20

 

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 1655 – early morning downrigging

**Area 1355/966 – downrigging following low-light bite; over deeper water

**Area 1793/1663 – smoking slabs for bottom-huggers in 24′

**Area 1787/1770 – topwater action over 17′ up to shoreline

**Area 1070 – bluecatfish 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

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