OK heres the deal in a nut shell, people have been asking for a report on Whitney and I have been seeing a lot of opinions. True story, fishing has been slow all summer since the G.A. as everyone is aware of. Now Stripers are starting to show up in some of there normal places for this time of year, still not wearing them out by no means but they are being caught, better one day than the other. I spoke at length with our biologist at Whitney and got the report on the gill net survey and according to scientific evidence not some GUIDE touting his opinion, the fish are still there, the gill net survey showed 1.5 fish per net if I remember correctly and that is the same as it was last year, we went in to 2010 with the highest gill net survey we have had since the 80's, this year the survey was done after the kill and after the water receeded back to normal pool. I always thought that we didn't lose a bunch of game fish just to the fact that we never saw a lot floating during the kill( I was on the water nearly every day). The biologists have always been right with their survey and when they have said the fish are there in the past, the fish have been there and we just wasn't finding them. I believe the reason for that is that they have had no reason to school up, we lost a ton of shad, all the stripers and sandies we were catching after the kill where full of small sandbass fry and fingerlings, sandbass are not a favorite diet of Stripers or whites. I feel like the fish, whites and stripers have been scattered out across the lake in search of prey and have had no reason to bunch up with no schools of bait to chase to trap against ledges and edges or at the surphace. In saying all that I know that stripers are being caught but it has been on again off again, I started running crappie and white bass trips at Aquilla (and been catching lots of nice crappie) till things picked up but have kept a finger on the pulse at Whitney and have had reorts of good fish being caught. I did a trip yesterday with Melvin and it was slow but still stripers to 8lbs and whitebass where caught and I saw a little schooling activity (whitebass) by the state park as well, something I haven't seen all summer. The shad have had time to spawn a couple of times and I saw more balls of bait fish on my graph yesterday than I have seen in months. I am going with the scientific evidence and am going to get out there and start scouting and fishing whitney more and hopefully with the shad starting to come back we will start seeing the schools of fish bunching back up, only time will tell. I know the nay sayers and the Whitney guide haters are going to rip this apart and I am not saying I'm right and someone else is wrong. I am simply going by the facts given me and what I witnessed with my own eyes and my experiance fishing Whitney the past 30 years or so. I will be on Whitney more this week and in the future and will post up with more info as I get it. Good luck and as always God Bless and hope to, C Ya on the Water!

Thanks for the report. Good luck and keep us informed.

+1 for the report. We were out today from daybreak to about noon. Saw quite a few baitballs on the graph but very few fish. My son hooked somethig huge by the dam,but it got off before he could get it to the surface. We used two hellbender downriggers with no success. Went from the dam to Katy bridge without a bite. I won't give up on Whitney because I have fished it for over thirty years. I just hope she gets back to NORMAL after the summer is over.

I grew up on whitney, absolutly love the lake... But can anyone tell what happened? Sure we have the algea, drought and sudden rise but still it should not be like it is...what will time bring??? More algea,,,

It's coming around. Caught fish my last two trips out there.

perhaps...all I have to say is the only public record fish surveys on Whitney are for 2007 and 2008. when i can read the numbers in print then I'll believe it...Rick

Rick call or email TPWD and get Biologist John Tibbs email and send him a PM I am sure he will be more than happy to send you the info and or call you, a super nice man and very glad to offer his info, the surveys have been done but as far as being on a website I am not sure where to tell you to look. Heck I'll go ya one better, I'll call him and have him email me a copy of them and with his permission put them here just for you, not sure why you think I'm lying, don't believe weve ever met and I know I've never givin you a reason to think so. But brother you have a great day anyway.
Fished Whitney today and marked a lot of fish and big balls of bait fish, more each time I go out. Didn't slay them but had a decent enough day, enough to satisfy my clients and got them booked in the future and good enough to get me excited, things are looking better. The bite started out slow and finally got on a pattern with color and depth and started catching fish, may be a better PM bite because the later and hotter it got the better the bite was. We were downrigging and caught all of our fish in 25 to 35' of water on 1/2 oz white bucktail jigs with chartruese snake trailers, pulling through big bait balls with hooks sticking out of the bait and hooks above the bait keeping the downrigger balls just above the fish and bait, usually between 18 to 20' depending on the depth of the fish and bait. If time permits I will go out one day and do a mid day to pm scouting trip to see if any better, my suspicion is that it will be better, just according to todays bite. Here are a few fish caught (stripers) and a couple of big slab crappie from Aquilla.


This was this gentlemans first striper ever! He had a blast, we all did.



Camille celebrated her birthday striper fishing on Whitney.

If you like catching and eating crappie head to Aquilla, you shouldn't have to locate brush piles. We have been slaying the big slab crappie in 18' of water on the side of main lake humps, they have been producing better than brush piles.


Good Luck, God Bless ya and hope one day real soon to C Ya on the Water!
Randy.

The Boss and I were there Saturday fishing for bass mid-lake.. fished a number of the spots where we caught fish last year and the year before... We fished from 6:30 a.m. until 10 a.m.

We didn't get a bite... We fished top-water, crank baits, T-rigs and C-rigs. We fished humps, main lake points and shallow flats.

We didn't mark a lot of fish.. a few, but not many... the ones we did mark were in the mouth of the creek channels at 20 feet or so, and in the middle of the channels.

Not saying there aren't fish out there.. just saying we didn't get any bites in the mid-lake part of the lake where we have caught fish in the past.

We will continue to test Whitney.. but only once in a while until we find some fish there or hear of other folks finding fish there.

Caught most of our fish after 10AM. Just saying, may be a later bite. Might try that, I know I am.

Toooooo hot!!! 80� plus at 10 a.m.!!! Don't want to die of sun stroke or heat stroke... life is too short for us old folks.

I hear ya, heck we have a cold front coming in, going to be all the way down in the lower 90's by the weekend. May have to break out a sweater! If you don't mind, let me know if you do get on a black bass bite so I can add it in on my fishing report on the outdoors show.

Nice report Randy..sounds more promising than all the doom and gloom rumors that we hear..
Good luck to ya !!

Thanks J.D. I know you guys through some of the same stuff up there with the media and others or your situation. No one wants to report the good news but let something bad happen and it is all over the press, guess gloom and doom sells. It's not great down here buts its not dead either, I am to blame as well for tucking tail and running down the hwy from Whitney to Aquilla and running trips and not scouting Whitney like I should have the past couple of months but then again I retained my customers, caught fish and sent them home with gallon bags of fresh fillets. No not Stripers, but we did wear out the crappie and whites and had fun doing it. Like Bryon Hughes said on his show the other day , As long as it ends in FISH!
Every lake goes through cycles anyway and we have had a great run on Whitney the last 3 or 4 years, catching quick limits and fish over 20 Lbs to boot, 10 plus pounds where pretty common every trip out. If you wanted big fish Whitney was one of the big fish destinations. I am sure it will be again, gotta take the bad with the good sometimes. Another thing we need to look at is there is a lot of water out there that we didn't have last year, we went from 16' low to 4 1/2' high and are still only about 2' low, a lot of water from that 16' range to the shore and I as the rest am guilty of not fishing that water like I should. There is brush and grass and cover for what bait fish we had left to hide in along with the fry that spawned out and could possibly be holding fish as well. I got a phone call in late June from a buddy that was at the mouth of the Nolan up in the Brazos above Whitney catching Stripers to 12 lbs, unheard of in June, they should be back at the main lake, but then again there was good water up there, shad, and no reason for them to come back down. Speaking of that there are reports of a lot of 4 to 6" stripers are being caught on slabs around the lake and that tells me we had a natural spawn as no stripers have been stocked in Whitney, I know we had the flow at the right time of year and had the continued flow at the right time and had reports of white bass fishers chasing the sandie spawn up river catching and getting spooled by linesiders. I think 2 + 2 + 2= 6? Now if we could just divert the water from Granbury in the spring and clean it up before the GA gets sent to Whitney we would be in better shape. OK, excuse me as I step down off my soap box!

Did a search on the www and found where Mike Acosta had a write up on his discussion with John Tibbs out TPWD biologist! Thanks Mike and John. Check out this link.

http://hcnews.com/pages/archive/sports-archive/mike-acosta-calling-mr-tibbs-for-restocking-news/

Your welcomed Team Redneck as I write weekly articles for the Hood County News. I want all the Brazos lakes back. I am hoping for a good winter at Whitney this year just like last year before the bloom.

The only thing i will have to remind you is that Granbury did not have the algae this last year. We were muddy essentially all winter. The algae you had was already there in Whitney