Mother Nature needs to get back on her meds and quit with these wild temperature swings. Last week lived up to the “Texas weather” saying about waiting a day and a different season will show up, and planning a springtime fishing trip was hard to do with winter poking its head back in through the window and breathing its icy breath on us.
I did manage to get on the water one morning last week, and even though the majority of crappie, largemouth bass, and white bass aren’t spawning at Lake Waco yet, I managed to catch and release a few fish from the South Bosque before the lunch bell rang.
It wasn’t daylight yet when I’d set up a couple of light-action rods and reels with crappie rigs, and before heading out, I called a store where I usually buy minnows to make sure they had a couple dozen.
Now I don’t want to come off sounding like that bitter old man who complains about the size of candy bars when he was a kid, or how far he had to walk to school uphill in the snow, but when I was growing up, bait shops were as plentiful as Baptist churches. That morning, right before I headed off to the river, every place told me the same thing — the truck will be arriving after lunch.
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That news knocked my confidence down a few notches because I had already put my game plan in place, complete with minnows, and I’d been visualizing my slip cork disappearing under the surface a few dozen times, followed by me cooking up some skillets of crappie fillets for us and the neighbors. It was a beautiful plan until the minnow-tank truck driver overslept.
But I re-wrote the game plan, re-rigged the poles with some jigs and swim baits, and went down to the river to play. When I got there, I saw a few folks fishing on the bank, along with a couple of guys wading and fly fishing, and both of them were dragging a stringer of fish behind them.
Fly anglers are kind of like the canary in the white bass fishing coal mine. If they’re not catching anything, then there probably aren’t any sandies running. But they each had four or five fish, and that was good enough motivation for me to get on the water.
I worked my way downstream toward the main lake, figuring that the whites would be staging up near the river’s mouth, and hit likely-looking crappie habitat along the way. It wasn’t much of a successful day in terms of fishing, with only a handful coming aboard, but it would’ve made a decent lunch for one.
Warming water temperatures over the next few days should kick the fish into gear, but the missing ingredient needed to trigger the white bass spawning run is stream flow, and with low water levels and no rain projected for the upcoming week, the whites may end up spawning in the main lake along rocky and sandy points instead of migrating upstream.
There’s a 10-inch minimum length restriction on both crappie and white bass, and each has a 25-fish daily bag limit per angler. It’s smart to have a measuring tape on hand, because “eyeballing it” can cost you if your fish are short.
Casting call
In any sport, fundamental skills are essential to success, and fishing’s most important skill is casting. Mis-casting a lure into a tree or other hazard is a great way to not catch fish. While you’re heaving away trying to free the hook from the limb, the fish below will likely sense the commotion and move on to a less threatening environment.
Through the years, I’ve kept my casting skills sharp through practicing the craft by setting up targets in the yard — and even in the house — and casting, flipping, and pitching baits to them. I’ve gotten my hand-eye-gear coordination honed to the point that even though I might not catch the most fish, it’s not for the lack of amazing casts.
This Saturday, Allen Samuels Dodge, 201 W. Loop 340 in Waco, will host a Kids Casting Competition event to let kids learn and compete in skills and accuracy challenges for bragging rights and prizes.
Saturday’s event is one of 12 scheduled for Waco and it’s free to participate. All equipment is provided, and you can register and find out more at fishkidatheart.org.
Answer: It’s the best time
I was fortunate enough to fish a few times with hall-of-famer Charlie Pack on his Fishin’ Country television show, and whenever I’d let friends and family know the air date and time, I’d always get the same question: “Why is it on at five-thirty in the morning?”
The answer is that if fishing shows were broadcast at 8 o’clock on a Saturday morning, most of the target audience would already be out fishing. Those pre-dawn shows also serve to get those fishing juices going — watching somebody catching fish while you’re eating breakfast and loading your gear is almost like a pep rally, and by the time you hit the water, you’ve got your game face on.
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