On Thursday afternoon, March 28, I fished with a pair of fathers and sons from the Salado area. Joining me, were Mike Splawn, and his son, Josh, and J.J. Peckham and his nine-year-old son, Declan.

Thanks to a nice warm-up into the low 70s, and winds which were steady at S 12–13, fishing was better this afternoon then I have seen in over a week’s time. Although the fish were still not aggressive, they were fairly easily found, and, with enough schools yielding 10 to 20 fish each, we were able to put together a catch of 89 fish with two rather inexperienced boys, who only stayed hard after it for about three of the four hours.

For the first half of the trip, while the fish were less aggressive, we relied on working white, three-quarter ounce slabs vertically with a slow smoking tactic.

By the trip’s halfway point, fish were beginning to chase farther off the bottom and more quickly upwards, thus indicating an increase in their energy level. As I saw this happening, and as fish presented themselves off the port or starboard side of the boat as seen on side imaging, I had , Michael and J..J use the sawtooth method with MAL Original lures to present baits to a greater number of fish by reaching out horizontally.

This trend of increasing aggressiveness continued right up to sunset, allowing us to jump right into horizontal presentations at the last two areas we fished .

Since the boys were not all that focused at this point, I had them use the MAL Lures vertically since their main interest was now in watching fish follow their baits on the Garmin LiveScope.

The 89 fish catch this afternoon consisted of 88 white bass and 1 white crappie.