Striper's
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Most that know me know that I almost always fish with my Dad. My Dad has some health issues that we are in the process of dealing and it has kept me off the water for a while but he wanted to go fishing so I took him up to Lake Buchanan today. We left our house at 3:30am so we could get to the lake while it was still dark.
For those of you that might not know, Lake Buchanan is very low, so I had called ahead trying to find a boat ramp...ha ha. I had heard some reports that some boats were being launched up near the Dam at a place that rented cabins and had some RV spaces so I called them. Sure enough they told me that a few boats were being launched there, they charge a $5.00 launch fee. The instructions were as follows....."Come on in the park, follow the signs to the boat ramp, drive about half way down the ramp and turn right onto the gravel, (it is actuall fine chipped granite), follow the car tracks about a 1/4 of a mile down to a point, the boats have been putting in there. Just back right in off the shorline but its getting kinda shallow and harder to get the boats in so some guys are putting their boats in more to the right, just don't go to far right, its sort of boggy"........ ok.
First clue.... when someone directs you to "drive on down the boat ramp about half way and turn right" that in itself might ought to be construed as a RED FLAG but apparently that one went straight over my head.
Second clue... " Just back right in off the shoreline but its getting kinda shallow and harder to get the boats in the water" that one made itself quite clear.
We were at the waters edge at 6:00am, dark, stars out.... I backed in following the tracks already in the sand from fellow "adventurers". The water half way up my trailer tires... hmmm well maybe I'll back this big ole' Ford Diesel in a little more...ok I have the back of my truck in the water and the water is 3/4's of the way up my trailer tire and we now have official contact with the boat and the water, don't get excited to early now I didn't say the boat was, "floating". I'll just get my Dad in the boat to put the motor down and help back up as I shove, and shove, and I'm starting to think, "hernia waiting to happen". When I stop and figure what the heck its getting lighter by the second and we have not budged this boat an inch. I get back in the truck and back up. Now my entire truck is in the lake with the trailer and boat. It's light now... and I'm really thinking if we can't get the boat off right now we are not going to get to fish... understand my boat is not huge, a 20ft. center console, aluminum flat bottom. I shove and my Dad guns the boat motor in reverse (not alot of people know you can almost fill a boat full of water doing that) in our case it was only about 50 gallons give or take... but the boat moved about 6 inches. So we tried again and finally got the boat off the trailer. Alright, its daylight but not terible, we have only been working for 45 minutes to get the boat off the trailer.... the truck came right out, thank God!
So on with the fishing report....
We eased out of the cove and turned toward the Dam. We went about a 1/2 mile and saw a school of stripers already on top ( imagine that) right near a river channel marker. My Dad had on a "Top Dog" and I had on a silver holograghic slab spoon. The Top Dog was hit almost immediately by a nice sized keeper striper, I caught a small striper right away. The Top Dog was then blown out of the water with a huge swirl under it and water flying everywhere with one of the largest stripers I had ever seen. I told my Dad he will come right back but as he twitched the lure another much smaller fish grabbed it. It happens... the school stayed up although moving pretty fast for about 1 hour and 40 minutes. We limited out on stripers plus one hi-bred, we caught and released about a dozen more keeper sized fish plus a bunch of undersized stripers. We caught a few white bass later after the stripers went down for good on jigging spoons and another couple of nice sized stripers and hi-breds, all released. We started actually fishing at 6:45am and were off the water (well thats not exactly a true statement, we quit fishing at 11:00am) we worked at getting the boat back on the trailer another 30 minutes but we finally did it.
All in all a typical fishing trip for my Dad and I...
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"Reel Rednecks" fishing team
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