This past Thursday morning I fished a SKIESUnlimited trip with Mrs. Tania Culpepper and her two children, 10-year-old Jasmine, and 5-year old Tristan.
Jasmine Culpepper went from rookie to technically capable all in one trip today. She was expertly handling the rigging of our downriggers and bringing in the white bass once they turned on about midway through the morning.
Like most 5 or 6 year olds, Tristan did great up until the sun got hot, then he got to asking about when lunch time was going to be. He caught his fair share of fish today, as well.
Neither Tristan nor Jasmine had ever landed a fish in their lives before, so I had my work cut out for me today.
As was the case yesterday, we had some lingering grey cloud cover completely obscuring sunrise and beyond thus preventing a sudden brightening of the sky and that triggering of the fish to begin feeding that comes with it. So, the bite got off to a slow start and slowly ramped up with a peak at around 9:00 to 9:45.
This morning we ran sonar over four distinct areas finding fish at the last three of those four areas and really getting into them just at the last area we fished. Between fishing the first two areas for white bass and the last two areas for white bass, we went up shallow and inserted a bit of sunfishing into the agenda while waiting for the skies to clear and brighten.
The kids did really well at everything I showed them. I was really impressed how Tristan remembered the button push sequence on my downriggers necessary to get them deployed to the correct depth after showing him this just one time.
Jasmine essentially operated autonomously after I showed her how to rig everything on the downriggers from start to finish just two or three times. She untangled the rigs if they needed to be untangled, stripped out the right amount of line that the rigs were supposed to trail behind the boat, put the fishing line into the downrigger release clip, set the downrigger balls to the correct depth, and correctly tensioned the fishing rods so we would not miss a bite.
When all was said and done, the kids (and mom) put exactly 45 fish in the boat. Just under half of these were a mix of bluegill sunfish, longear sunfish, and bluegill sunfish, with the balance consisting of a mix of one, two, and three – year class white bass.
SKIESUnlimited stands for Schools of Knowledge, Inspiration, Exploration, and Skills.
SKIESUnlimited offers dozens of activities for military and Department of Defense kids of all ages, ranging from gymnastics to piano lessons, from academic tutoring to various forms of dance, and more. Monetary credit for such courses is available for children whose military parents are deployed.
To participate in such courses, children must first be registered with Child and Youth Services. Registration is free and is accomplished by contacting Parent Central Services at 254-287-8029. Once registered, parents may go online to enroll their children for the myriad courses available.
TALLY: 45 FISH, all caught and released
TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:
Start Time: 6:45a
End Time: 10:30a
Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 81F
Water Surface Temp: 84.7F
Wind Speed & Direction: SW breeze 11-13 mph the entire trip
Sky Conditions: 80% grey cloud cover through 8:00am, tapering off to 20% white cloud cover
Water Level: 0.24 feet low and slowly falling with only evaporative losses; 0 cfs release at dam
GT = 0
Wx SNAPSHOT:
AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:
**Area 040-854 – sparse white bass success on downriggers
**Area 200 – sunfish on slipfloats
**Area 1435-1971 – sparse white bass success on downriggers
**Area 668-453 – solid white bass action for ~75 minutes
Bob Maindelle, Central Texas Fishing Guide
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