Lake Austin 7-16-05
I was jolted from sleep on Saturday morning at the sound of my name being whispered. I heard, "Hey Clint, what time are we going?" or something along those lines. I responded, "Give me just a couple of minutes and we're going." I realized at that moment, I'd set my clock for 3:45 PM instead of AM and the voice that jolted me from sleep was my brother-in-law, Jonathan. He was pretty excited about going bass fishing for the first time in years. I got dressed, grabbed food for the road, and we were headed for Lake Austin in minutes. I forgot to check my phone for the time when we launched, but I'm guessing it was somewhere around 4:30ish? Anyway we launch out of Walsh Landing to avoid the $10 launch fee at 360 bridge. I motored over to a well known big bass spot, and started fishing with a black spiner bait with a colorado blade. We came up dry there, I can only imagine at least half my club has visited this spot in the last week while prepping for the tournament coming up this weekend.
With thunder rolling from clouds in the distance, I thought we should just hit the high percentage spots in a effort to put Jonathan on some fish before it started raining. My objective for the morning was only half about prefishing for my tournament, I wanted to make sure this was a guide trip as well. Once daylight began to creep over the horizon, I told Jonathan to prepare to run and gun. Then I explained what we were going to do for the rest of the morning, we were going to stop at spots and only make a few selected casts that would result in fish quickly. It wasn't until our third stop that Jonathan hooked up with a nice 2 to 3 lb bass on a top water popper, it jumped and came unbuttoned after a nice little fight on a long cast. Several other spots along the way would result in a repeat of this performance, but Jonathan was having a great time even if he hadn't gotten one in the boat. At 7:30 AM, Jonathan landed his first bass and made his day. It wasn't anything to brag about size wise, but it was the first bass he's caught in a very long time. With that milestone achieved, and only 30 minutes to spare, we headed back down the lake and stopped at the last of my hot spots for this section of the lake. I picked up my first fish hear, 12 inch little fighter on a watermelon brush hog. It hit right next to a wall in about a foot of water. We worked the creek fairly quickly and I missed another fish. We moved out on the main lake at 8:00AM I put a call into the boss, to let her know we were on time. Kelly was gracious enough to grant us 30 more minutes of fishing as a result of the call. While I was on the phone, I landed another fish off a boat house with the brush hog. Jonathan was about to fall out of the back of the boat in laughter, because Kelly didn't even suspect I was still fishing... hehe. We pulled up on a dock with a little dog viscously guarding it, I over cast at it and nearly caught him. :-) This was a little entertaining and we both got a laugh at the prospect of, "what if." That little dog almost go my lure in his mouth. I made a more accurate attempt at the dock and set the hook on a large fish, I got a look at it once before it made a powerful surge and pulled the hook free. The big one that got away, based on my experience I'd guess the fish was over 5 lbs. :-) 8:30AM and we were done for the day, and as soon as we loaded the boat, it started raining. We headed off to have breakfast at Benny's Bagels with the kids and my wife.
With thunder rolling from clouds in the distance, I thought we should just hit the high percentage spots in a effort to put Jonathan on some fish before it started raining. My objective for the morning was only half about prefishing for my tournament, I wanted to make sure this was a guide trip as well. Once daylight began to creep over the horizon, I told Jonathan to prepare to run and gun. Then I explained what we were going to do for the rest of the morning, we were going to stop at spots and only make a few selected casts that would result in fish quickly. It wasn't until our third stop that Jonathan hooked up with a nice 2 to 3 lb bass on a top water popper, it jumped and came unbuttoned after a nice little fight on a long cast. Several other spots along the way would result in a repeat of this performance, but Jonathan was having a great time even if he hadn't gotten one in the boat. At 7:30 AM, Jonathan landed his first bass and made his day. It wasn't anything to brag about size wise, but it was the first bass he's caught in a very long time. With that milestone achieved, and only 30 minutes to spare, we headed back down the lake and stopped at the last of my hot spots for this section of the lake. I picked up my first fish hear, 12 inch little fighter on a watermelon brush hog. It hit right next to a wall in about a foot of water. We worked the creek fairly quickly and I missed another fish. We moved out on the main lake at 8:00AM I put a call into the boss, to let her know we were on time. Kelly was gracious enough to grant us 30 more minutes of fishing as a result of the call. While I was on the phone, I landed another fish off a boat house with the brush hog. Jonathan was about to fall out of the back of the boat in laughter, because Kelly didn't even suspect I was still fishing... hehe. We pulled up on a dock with a little dog viscously guarding it, I over cast at it and nearly caught him. :-) This was a little entertaining and we both got a laugh at the prospect of, "what if." That little dog almost go my lure in his mouth. I made a more accurate attempt at the dock and set the hook on a large fish, I got a look at it once before it made a powerful surge and pulled the hook free. The big one that got away, based on my experience I'd guess the fish was over 5 lbs. :-) 8:30AM and we were done for the day, and as soon as we loaded the boat, it started raining. We headed off to have breakfast at Benny's Bagels with the kids and my wife.
posted by Previous Guide Clint Bridges at 7:17 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home