but it wasn't. At least not for me.

I'm consistently striking out. I'm up to probably 100 hours on the water now with a grand total of 6 fish in my boat and only 2 of those were mine. (not counting the shad :P) the others were my wife and my buddy and none of them were impressive at all.

I've done a bit of black bass fishing so we'll say maybe 75 hours of attempts at hybrids and sand bass. Went out one morning before sunrise and found a school of sandies going apesh!t on the top of the water and couldn't get a single fish. Was throwing top waters, swim baits, slabs, humdingers, spoons, even threw a buzz bait out, a small crank, and a dd22 out of desperation.

The couple of fish I've caught were a 2.5 on a perch and a 5.05 on a 6inch shad with a bloody nose. I've been out with shad multiple times half the time the shad wasn't in the best shape but the other half (since I built my bait tank) were lookin lively and no red at all, all between 3 and 7 inches long.

I've also been throwing a variety of slabs and DD22 cranks and a carolina rigged LFT "live" 4inch shad. In general it's on humps or the deep side of points. I see fish on the finder, hell I've seen fish on the surface but nothing will touch my stuff.

Tonight I was in anywhere from 20-35ft of water throwing a chart ole ugly slab, black and silver humdinger, white shad slab, tennessee shad DD22, and that carolina rigged "live" shad from LFT. Never got so much as a nibble. I'm running out of ideas. I'm going out with Kerry Dugan sometime next week hopefully for a learning trip which will hopefully shed some light on what I'm doing wrong but it's startin to get to me. I've been fighting with the additional cost and time of putting my boat at a marina on eagle mountain but it's starting to become more and more tempting every skunked trip out.

Don't think I'm actually asking anything here so sorry if this is "spam" I just needed to vent =\

You are too tense ...seriously when I put that much pressure on myself the fishing is not good --- but that was some pretty good venting

I try to back up and just relax a little and then I try to go after something that is easy to catch...like those stinking yellow bass. After catching a few of those and I have confidence that I am "feeling the bite", now it is just a matter of locating feeding fish...or at least fish that will soon feed and just sit on them, yep, sit on them...changing locations is not always the answer.

Kerry will help you out -- that was a GREAT idea to get on his boat. Fishing with someone always takes the pressure off.

Such as Benbrook. Keep it up and you will dial em in soon. Fuzzy is right, you gotta relax. Fishing is fun not work. Time on the water will pay off eventually. Patience is needed too when fishing BB and luck never hurts either. Sometimes I am convinced that there is only one school of hybrids in the whole lake and if you dont find em you aint catchin. I dont think thats the case though. I have always liked BB for some odd reason. You might consider too fishing t-wok or LL then coming back to BB with some new found confidence. Good luck to ya.

gonna go up to eagle mountain eventually just to do some black bass fishing.

Thanks to a tip I found some "easy fishin" and caught 3 little sandies this morning, most succesful fishing trip on benbrook yet.

I had to stop because my boat was sinking but hey, at least I caught some fish.

Ended up being a couple small cracks, I've apparently been pulling water into em for a long time and it just got to the point that it made a big difference in how the boat handled. Pulled out, drained em, siliconed it as a temp fix and put it back in.

been catching good numbers of sandbass in the evening on benbrook the past week around balls of bait fish marked on graph.....use your electronics and mark balls of bait fish and I promise you will get bit

I believe I saw you today taking you boat out of the water just as we were loading up. I was in the Ranger. We had been out about 4+ hours. It was starting to get pretty hot.
We were hybrid hunting, but not successful today. We had great fun though. We caught about 100 yellows. Many were keeper size but we sent them back home. Also about 5 drum and a nice black and smaller channel.

My advise is not worth much, but were are rarely snookered out there. Almost always get into hybrids, often smaller ones. I believe at BB you must rely on your electronics totally, especially for hybrids. They move around alot. There are some spots better than
others, but you have to find them. Most folks tell me the bigger fish are usually caught on larger gizzards. We are lazy and don't chase the shad much and use varietys of slabs. Today white with green back was the ticket for the yellows.

You obviously know what your doing by reading your many posts. Hang in there. Kerry can really help you too

I'm really concerned about the water level. In the marina I was reading 2.8'. Looks like it may be a bad summer

Best of luck to you.
Bob.

The water level is going down fast.

if the water drops to the point that I have to take out instead of staying in a slip I'll be up at eagle mountain most likely. The water level will be the last straw for me on the lake before I swallow the extra costs of staying at EM.