Lake Ray Hubbard Guide Report:
EPIC EPIC EPIC and more EPIC
Watching the weather and trying to decided where I would have the most fun guiding yesterday. Wind said it would switch at 12 pm and blow out of the south. It was out of the North in the AM. So I told my client let's launch at 1 pm.
We launched at 1 and puttered out to the empty of people lake. There we're probably two or three boats on the entire lake at 1 o'clock.
Unfortunately the wind was still blowing 6-8 miles out of the north. All the birds were laying down on the water. I went around the lake three times checking all the spots. One spot in particular had the most gizzard shad holding in the area. I could see a few hybrids on side imaging but they were just moving to fast.
It is now approximately 330 and we still have nothing to show for. The wind is still out of the north. Now I'm nervous. The last trip they were on with me they caught over 200 Sandy's at Lavon. They left the option up to me on where I wanted to take them. Now I'm thinking that my business decision was the wrong one this time. My boat does not get skunked, or does it? .......nope.
Every time I would see birds flying I would zip over to them to investigate what they're doing. 99% of the time they were just flying or divebombing cormorants to try to make them puke up their food or let go of their catch they just surfaced with. A lot of times you will think oh my gosh the birds are driving over there. You run over there start casting and you get nothing. Then you see cormorants swimming around. Very irritating. Did those pelicans even eat? All they do is float around the dang lake. I don't think I've ever seen them divebomb like they do on the coast. Even on Texoma this time of year there's usually thousands of them. I never once saw them divebomb anywhere.
At 3:45 I noticed a swarm of birds that stayed up in the same exact area for about 15 minutes this time. So we packed it up and zipped over. Then it was game on!
First cast produced a 16 inch that Sandy. Next cast produced a 22 inch hybrid striper. Then it was just chaos until the sun disappeared over the horizon. The fish were blowing shad out of the water. They were in every direction all around my boat. One even my trolling motor chasing a gizzard shad. It was absolute awesomeness.
Blake is 4 years old. My mini client in the pics. He obviously reeled in most of the hybrids. Toward the end he couldn't do anymore. For about 15 minutes toward the end of the day , he caught four fish all on his own after I gave him a rod at the very end.
-He decided he wanted to try to fish on his own. I told him to open the bail to drop the slab to bottom and close bail and reel five times and start slabbing up and down. After the 4 th fish, that was a 6-7 lb hybrid, and he said he was done after that one.
He sat down and started eating crackers. Blake is my favorite mini client. His dad Garland has done amazing job raising this little guy. One of the most polite and well-behaved kids I've taken on the boat in a very long time. Four years old he even hunts with his dad and apparently has is a great shot.Props to you Garland.
The fish were blowing bait out of the water and swirling all over the place, slabs we're obviously not working as well. I alreadyhad cohos rigged on three other rods. I was actually using Cohoes from Moes, closed currently, The glitter chartreuse color. I did not even try another color. We would cast out to where the school was sitting and let it sink.
You would not even have to turn the reel to make the lure move and we were hooking up on big hybrids after the lure hit about 10-15 ft. They were anywhere from 32-28 foot and pushed up to 14 foot on a flat and we absolutely had a heyday on them.
If we didn't take a bunch of pictures I'm sure we probably would've hit 100 easily. It was almost every cast a hybrid. I think we only caught 15 to 20 Sandy's. And the rest were hybrids.
The little one said he was ready to go to the house. So we said one more cast. Dad casted and I casted. I ended up last showing a Seagull in midair.
Had an EPIC fight with the bird. CPR'ed after a photo op.
Ended up with:
53 Hybrid Striper.
15-20 White Bass.
1 monster Yellow Bass
Biggest hybrid was 26 1/2 inches long. We did not weigh anything.
Everything was CPR'ed.