Fishin’ with Grandma! — 44 Fish for Braxton Gravens

This past Monday evening I fished with Braxton Gravens, accompanied by his grandmother, Debra Gravens of Harker Heights.  Braxton flew in from near Oklahoma City, OK, for a summer visit and this trip was high on the list of things to do before returning.

IMG_3388

 

While on a summer vacation visit to his grandparents’ place in Harker Heights, Braxton Gravens of Oklahoma City was treated to a fishing trip by his grandmother, Debra Gravens.  Braxton landed 44 fish this past Monday evening.  On several occasions he landed 2 fish at a time as we downrigged with multi-lure rigs.

Thanks to some local thunderstorms, our afternoon trip temperatures were bearable and we enjoyed a good bit of cloud cover.  The instability in the weather caused by these storms put the fish off a bit, as evidenced by the fact that we did not see a single school of fish come to the surface to strike at bait the entire trip.

Since Braxton’s prior experience was limited and took place some time ago, we started with the basics by targeting sunfish up shallow and then stepped up to bigger game later in the evening.

In under 7 feet of water, we used light tackle on a bream pole to catch a variety of sunfish species.  In under an hour’s time Braxton managed to put 20 sunfish in the boat and got pretty good at bait placement once he realized how important it was to keep his rod tip down low after making a presentation so as not to drag the bait back toward the boat.

Next, we set out in search of white bass in deeper, open water.  We found 2 strong populations of suspended fish and worked them thoroughly as there was a lack of heavily congregated fish feeding near bottom thanks to the unstable weather caused by the passing storms.

At our first downrigging stop we put another 20 fish in the boat using 3-armed umbrella rigs equipped with Pet Spoons.  We then moved in search of some bottom-hugging fish to jig for within an hour of sunset but found little.  We then moved again and targeted another collection of suspended fish.  This group gave up another 4 white bass before an early sunset caused by heavy cloud cover in the western sky brought the bite to an end around 8:35p.

Braxton single-handedly landed a total of 44 fish.  As we parted ways in the parking lot he told me, “Thank you for this memory I’ll never forget.”

TALLY: 44 FISH, all caught and released

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 5:15pm

End Time: 8:45pm

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: a cool July 88F thanks to nearby thunderstorms which passed just in time for us to make a timely departure from the dock

Water Surface Temp: 87.1F

Wind Speed & Direction: S breeze under 10 mph the entire trip

Sky Conditions: 60% cloud cover thanks to some nearby thunderstorm cloud remnants

Water Level: 0.15 feet high and slowly falling with only evaporative losses of ~0.02 feet per day; 0 cfs release at dam

GT = 0

Wx SNAPSHOT:

24JUL17

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 200 – sunfish on slipfloats (20 fish)

**Area 671-1082 – white bass on downriggers (20 fish)

**Area vic 058 – white bass on downriggers (4 fish at last light)

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

Twitter: www/twitter.com/bobmaindelle

Leave a Reply