WHO I FISHED WITH:

This morning, Friday, April 12, I conducted a “Kids Fish, Too!” trip for the Guerrero brothers — Isaac (13), Micah (9), and Matias (6). The boys’ grandfather, Gary Emory, coordinated the trip, and the boys’ mom, Kate, came along for moral support and crowd control.

Gary sold his roofing company and retired so as to be able to enjoy his grandkids, and Kate homeschools the boys, hence giving them the flexibility to enjoy adventures like this morning’s without competing with the rest of America to do so on Saturdays.

My next open dates are: 16 & 24 April, and 03 May (AMs)

Here is how the fishing went…

 

WHERE WE FISHED: Lake Belton

With warming water — and about three additional feet of it coming into the lake since Tuesday — fishing both yesterday and today was a whole lot easier than I thought it might be given all of the environmental change that has taken place in such a short period of time.

 

I was concerned because as my crew showed up at around 7:15, the winds were flat calm, but, just as we began heading out to our first spot after my pre-trip briefing, an 8 mph northwest wind began to blow, both moving and rippling the water enough to really fire the fish up.

 

This boosted the boys confidence early and allowed them to make rookie mistakes without those being too costly.

 

In under an hour’s time, the three boys had landed exactly 35 fish before the winds began to taper down in advance of a wind shift; the fish activity tapered down with it.

 

The weather forecast called for southerly winds to start and build to about 13 mph by 11 a.m., so, we pushed through the more difficult 30 or so minutes of calm until that wind shift finally did materialize.

 

During this time, as I often do when conditions get tough, I moved out to as deep water as I could find fish in (in this case, 42 feet), and allowed depth to serve as a buffer to the tough conditions we faced.

 

While on this same deep water spot, the south winds began making their way to us from the southeast.  As the ripple started, and the water began to move once again, the bite fired up greatly. We never moved off that area until 10:20 when all three boys had had enough. By this time, they had put exactly 111 fish in the boat.

 

At one point in time, Micah saw the Garmin LiveScope monitor he was watching come alive with a school of fish covering an area from the bottom up to 8 feet off of it, moving quickly from one side of the screen to the other.  Wanting everyone else to see what he was seeing, he just blurted out, “Whoa! Look at the TV!”.  His brothers knew exactly what he was talking about.

 

I found that we could extend the time over which the white bass would stay interested enough to bite by starting off with slabs and, once interest in the slabs began to wane, switching over to MAL Lures.

 

I had the boys work both of these vertically with a smoking tactic in rhythm with a metronome going 80 to 90 BPM, depending on how aggressive the fish appeared on Garmin LiveScope.

 

This catch of 111 fish included 110 white bass, and 1 just-short hybrid striper.