FISH CATCHING TRAVEL

“SAVE OUR WATERS”

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The Wade Right Fishing Belt

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Check out the new Madre Sling

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Just Killing Time

Where I caught the last really big fish a couple of weeks ago.  But more than that, I love how the standing timber looks in the morning when the light is right.

I am just killing time as our heat wave continues.  It was just shy of 80 degrees when I hitched the boat up, and it was 92 when I called it a morning at 11:00.  The first thing when off loading the boat at daylight was how the water has receded past the end of the ramp, and there was a clear water line where it dropped.   And to make matters all that much “better”, the water temp was 91.5 at the ramp, and most of the rest of the lake.  So again knowing it was going to be short morning I got right to it.

Weather

79/96.  Very warm with a 60% of late morning showers and an afternoon thunderstorm.  Wind SSE  10 – 20.

Lake Level

Friday   93.61 msl.      Today  93.49 msl.

Solunar Period

Major  6:23 an to 8:23 am.

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The Knockin Tail is the perfect trailer for the swim jig.  They smack it!  

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It really is a matter of throwing it at the right tree.  Today the best one came in 10 foot of water, and the others less than 5 foot.  Still tossing the watermelon red 5″ stick worm on 15lb test with a pegged 1/4 tungsten weight and a 3/0 wide gap worm hook.  Not sure if the wide gap makes a big difference but it works for me better than a standard worm hook.  It was a morning of them swimming with it, I actually only felt 2 tic it, the rest were just there.  One when reeling it in it just kept coming back to the boat with no shake, and finally right beside the boat I realized it was a fish.  It was that kind of morning.

When it is tough I will take this size any day.

The bite was not fast and furious by any means, but any area with brush had a least one on it, and a couple of places 2 jumped on.  As the water falls this will definitely change up lake as it gets smaller.  Down lake not so much as there is plenty of wood out deep that holds fish.

     The only other good fish this morning.  The lake has lots of crappies.

As it has been it was 8 or 10 mostly smalls, and I easily missed that many.  As I said yesterday when they are coming to you on most bites you have to be sure you have enough slack out or they will jump off.  The good thing, until 9:30 when I switched to trolling they bit consistently.

On getting back down lake the shad and fish were a little deeper on the locator today than Friday, most in the 8 – 15 foot range.  It is pretty simple, get a shad looking crankbait that runs around 10 foot or so, toss it out about 50 feet and troll at 2.5 mph trying to fish the edges or breaks off flats and the river channel.  Of course the locator with the map are critical, it is not just dragging a bait around randomly hoping for a bite.  Now that I have trolled the last 3 times I have a better idea of where they are.  If it is a flat, or an underwater hump or point, they tend to gang up there if there are shad.

Today the wind started up and they were on the windy edges in the 15′ to 20′ of water.  The white bass were a little more cooperative, 4 jumped on, but still no size to speak of.  I guess I will just remain puzzled on why the lake does not produce bigger ones.  Also 5 or 6 bass easy, and 2 crappies.  I have always wondered why folks make fun of trolling, or any other specific way to fish that they do not do.  (As a perfect example – various opinions on croaker soakers.)  My only question to them:  Did you catch 20+ this morning?

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You all know that I really like Bighorn sheep.  Have been watching the Big Bend area as the sheep count was scheduled for now and was hoping to glean some info for a trip to see if I could spot some.  Unfortunately the helicopter crashed with a TPWD Vet and 2 TPWD employees who were the sheep guys for the department.  A tough loss for the department, and a much tougher loss for the families.  My condolences.

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The Knockin Tail gets it done on any saltwater fish anywhere they swim.  How about a nice Snook!

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One of our skilled local fisherman won a tournament at POC the other day and that I liked.  It was a jon boat invitational.  It does not take a $65k fancy boat to be a great fisherman.  In fact, often that has nothing to do with ability, simply a matter of who can afford one.  And to go along with that the best trout fisherman I know catches big strings most of us dream about out of his aluminum boat.  Would love to see more of this style of tournament for the average guy.  On that note there was a 90hp limit bass tournament on Fayette this spring.  Would be nice to see more of that in the future.  Not only give some folks a chance to tournament fish and maybe expose a few more younger fishermen.

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Tomorrow I get the hearing test, at this point I am half deaf, just ask the Boss.  So will get that out of the way, buy the hearing aids, and go on about my business.  Finally got a few new things in so the bay is on the table.  Really looking forward to it and reporting back to you.  So keep stopping in and thanks for reading my stuff.

Good Luck and Tight Lines