WHO I FISHED WITH: 

This morning, Wednesday, April 17, I fished with returning guests, Dr. Jim Wood and his friend, also from the medical community, Sky Sparks.

 

Jim celebrated his 77th birthday today.

Sky makes his living as a medical scribe. The two men first got to know each other when Jim was practicing and specializing in wound care, and the two have remain friends since then.

Next available dates:  Wed., 24 April (AM), Wed., 01 May (AM)

Here is how the fishing went…

 

WHERE WE FISHED: Lake Belton

In a word, the fishing this morning was … tough. We had next to no wind all morning and a thin veil of fog for the first half of the morning.

 

I had hoped to get Jim and Sky on some pre-dawn fish blitzing spawning shad up in shallow water. Although we did find plenty of spawning shad, there was not much in the way of gamefish trailing them to feed upon them.

 

After we left the potential for catching shallow water fish behind around 7:20, I began looking for heavily schooled fish in deep water for us to work vertically for.

 

After finding a good school, I went to go about setting up on them and I encountered issues with my trolling motor deploying properly.  We wound up losing about an hour as my sweet wife hoisted my spare trolling motor into her vehicle and shuttled it out to us  at lakeside. With the new trolling motor installed, we set out once again to find fish. It was now 8:20 AM and the winds were still nearly calm.

 

We would go onto fish 5 areas with the fish behaving in nearly the exact same manner at each one of them.  Being heavily grouped and on the bottom, these fish would express interest in the slabs we dropped down to them just for a few minutes after we arrived, allowing a catch of just a handful of fish. After that, the fish would turn off and only halfheartedly follow lures, if at all.

 

We found that by remaining in an area awaiting the arrival of additional schools of fish to pass beneath the boat, we could catch another one or two or three fish before everything went quiet at each of these locations.

 

In this manner, we were able to put together a catch of 41 fish including 37 white bass and 4 freshwater drum.

 

I compared notes with two other regular Lake Belton anglers, and they reported identical behavior under these same, tough conditions.  Misery loves company!!