The following is a cut-and-paste from my weekly column which appeared in the Killeen Daily Herald on Nov. 26, 2023. Although I wrote it concerning Lake Belton, the same thing applies throughout the southeast and southwest US...






PHOTO CAPTION: James Wilson landed this Belton Lake hybrid striped bass weighing 5.25 pounds as his fishing guide used the presence of fish-eating birds to identify the general area where such fish, and the bait they were consuming, were located.

Courtesy | Holding the Line Guide Service

ARTICLE:

It is a most welcome event every year, and every year by Thanksgiving Day it happens. “It” is the arrival of migratory, fish-eating birds on our local reservoirs, including gulls, terns, ospreys, cormorants, and even occasional golden eagles and bald eagles. Up until these birds arrive, anglers have few options for finding fish other than via the use of sonar.

Although well-tuned sonar is both thorough and reliable, use of it can be a slow process, as sonar image quality degrades with speed, and speeds of over approximately 7 mph are simply too fast to reveal the level of detail necessary to find six- to 20-inch-long fish in over 15 feet of water.

Cold weather causes the bodies of water in more northerly latitudes to begin to ice over, thus preventing these fish-eating birds from accessing the fish they need to eat in order to survive. These
birds ride the north winds of incoming cold fronts and head south for the winter. Some of these birds only stay on our local lakes for a few days and then depart, but others will take up residence until the spring warmup.

The first helpful bird activity this fall took place on Nov. 6 and 7, followed by another spurt of activity on Nov. 12. Evidently, these were transient birds which moved on.

Finally, two Saturdays ago on Nov. 18, about 60 gulls showed up on Belton Lake and pointed the way to fish. On each morning trip I conducted since that time – on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday – we caught some, if not all, of our fish thanks to birds helping point the way to the fish.

The number of birds present on Belton Lake swelled to over 200 birds going into this weekend.

You may wonder how the birds know where the fish are. Well, all of these birds have keen eyesight. When aggressive gamefish force baitfish, namely threadfin shad, to the surface and use the lake’s surface as a barrier to trap these small food fish against, the birds see the glint of light off of the fishes’ sides as well as the small splashes of water these fish throw up into the air as they pursue the bait to the surface. While the cormorants can dive under the surface to hunt for their food, gulls, terns, ospreys and eagles only pluck their food off the water’s surface.

To take advantage of this behavior to enhance your fishing success, you must simply be observant. Intentionally looking for bird activity both with the naked eye and with optics like binoculars or spotting
scopes, as well as enlisting the aid of everyone aboard your boat, will up your odds of spotting helpful bird activity.

Birds will only feed when fish are most aggressive, as this is the only time the fish will drive bait from the bottom upward to the surface, hence the time during which birds will be active will be a subset of that time during which the fish are active – generally during the first three hours of light in the morning, and again during the final two hours of light prior to sunset.

Once birds are spotted, many make the mistake of running to the birds and trying to keep up with them using a trolling motor. Doing this will inevitably produce some fish, but remember these birds must
pluck their food off of the surface, so they will only be where they can do this, which may not be where the vast majority of the gamefish are.

Consider this scenario. Think of an area of the lake approximately 300 yards in diameter with a flat, 30-foot-deep bottom. Now, let us overlay the numbers found on a clock’s face horizontally atop this circular area. If 15 aggressive hybrid striped bass are driving shad to the surface inside this area at the nine o’clock position, nearly every fish-eating bird inside this 300-yard circle will be flocked atop those 15 hybrid, even though there may be 1,500 hybrid stripers and white bass schooled up heavily on the bottom just a few hundred yards away around the three o’clock position.

Why would the birds not go where most of the fish are? Because those bottom-oriented fish are not driving shad to the surface and are therefore not giving the birds any visual cues as to their whereabouts.

So, instead of frenetically chasing birds here, there and everywhere, the wise angler will use the birds to help locate the general area in which fish and bait are found, and then use sonar to identify large schools of fish to stop and fish for.

Such bottom-oriented schools tend to be much less mobile, hence, one can stay on top of them for longer periods of time, catching fish consistently all the while.

If history is any teacher, we will have many weeks of helpful bird activity to come; indeed, the birds often remain through at least mid-March, although at some point they lose interest in chasing fish and begin chasing opportunities created by diving birds, such as cormorants and loons.

Avail yourself of the excellent fishing now at hand by using the presence of birds as a shortcut to fish location. This past week, following these practices, my clients landed well over 600 fish
including largemouth bass, blue catfish, freshwater drum, hybrid striped bass and white bass.

Solid info Bob!

Thanks for the informative article, Bob! I'll have to remember to resist the temptation to go bird chasing.

My pleasure. What lake do you primarily fish? And, when do your birds typically arrive and depart?

Well Bob, I'll have to admit that I'm not quite as scientific as you, believe it or not. Whenever and wherever I see the the birds, I go to them and fish where they're diving. Often times join the already in-progress boat show.
That's has been my "technique".

I've not been out in my boat in a while due to a variety of reasons, but I've fished under birds on Livingston primarily. Usually an early morning thing when it happens and only lasts an hour or so. After reading your article, I'm looking forward to getting out there to my "bird spot" and try your techniques out.

i always guess wrong where the 3 o'clock position is and find there are no fish to be found except nearer the birds

One of the points of the article was to provide some peace of mind that well-tuned side-imaging sonar really takes the guesswork out of this equation. It all starts with levelling your transducer, then using the right frequency (typically 455 kHz for water over 25'), then manipulating your scroll speed, sensitivity and contrast until the underwater world becomes clear. In 30' of water, a school of white bass can readily be spotted over 120 feet away (at the 150' range lines looking right and left).

Here's what they will look like. I was in 22 feet of water when I found these fish. Those fish in-line with the 76-foot range line are approximately 54 feet to the left of the boat (76 - 22 = 54).

The birds were extinct today on Belton from Temple Lake Park to Rogers Park. Found scattered small schools of fish in 30' to 35' of water on side imaging, but overall it was a pretty tough day out there.

Great write up Bob, I totally agree with your observation.
The same is true even when fish are breaking on top during the spring run.
Sometimes the "boat show crowd" can be annoying, I look around with the sidescan
and can usually find schools of fish deeper down and out of the crowd of boats.

This is totally true. I was out at Texoma last Tuesday, and we kept chasing the birds. We caught some small fish and I was sick of constantly going after the birds. I moved out to deeper water, at about 35 ft and we found large schools hanging at 25 ft. We were deadsticking and caught a lot of fish drfiting over the schools while birds were working about 400 yards to our west.

Bob, great write up! It’s really hard to not chase the birds, but history is teaching me and you just confirmed that its not generally worth it to chase birds. Find the birds and fish are close by is what I need to get into my way of thinking, vs trying to stay on the schooling fish/birds.

Bob, this has been my observation as well. Good for you to share. Lately, here at CC and at Tawakoni, there has been good bird activity but no fish under or around them. The attraction was strictly loon activity driving shad to the top.