We had some excellent fall and early winter fishing here in the Texas hill country to round out our year. Christmas week we experienced a big northern cold front that brought 20-40mph winds and temps from 20 degrees to down in the negatives! Obviously this was going to have an impact on our fishing be it where they were positioned previously and what techniques we would have to use to entice bites. I did not run any trips during the freeze but I had a weeks worth of trips starting the day after Christmas. Thankfully there was a big warming trend following a southern wind with air temps in the upper 60's and lower 70's very ideal for fishing and to make clients comfortable. Typically if I have time between trips I would scout the day before a trip to see where the fish are and what they are biting on so that I have at the very least somewhere to start and put clients on fish right away. I didn't have the luxury of doing that this time so I was a little nervous about how the first trip would go. We started our afternoon trip at 2pm and picked up my 3 clients Bryce, Mike, and John whom rebooked the same dates the year before previously on Lake Georgetown but this year I decided Lake Buchanan would be our best option. It didn't take long and I saw a scattered bird school which has been a great pattern for the past month or so. I dropped the trolling motor and spot locked on a very big school in shallow water that gave up only a few bites surprisingly a little frustrated and still the large amount of fish in the area we decided to start trolling flies. We managed to hook and catch a few nice white bass but there was a good amount of big trees in the area and we got snagged a bunch of times. Our window of opportunity closed so we started hopscotching around the lake covering a lot of ground unfortunately not finding any real volume of fish. With time running out and only a hour left in our trip I had a few more areas left to look and finally I found a massive school of fish. Since the past couple hours had been super slow my initial reaction was drop them down now they all looked at me with hesitation so I exclaimed "DROP THE JIGS DOWN NOW!'' They jumped up and before I could get the trolling motor all the way in the water all 3 of them tripled up before they hit the bottom. This continued for over an hour with me running around the boat unhooking and netting fish as fast as I could. We enjoyed a wide open bite on magnum sized White Bass, Hybrid Striped Bass , and Striped Bass. Our technique of choice was jigging spoons used in conjunction with small swim baits to often times double up and catch 2 at a time. Our finally tally for the trip was 60 plus fish a great count considering we caught almost all our fish in the last hour of the trip. The rest of the weeks trips consisted of the same results some moments of driving around looking for fish but when we did find them it turned into pure chaos. Fantastic fishing for white bass, hybrids, and stripers. 50 to 100 plus fish a trip was average which isn't uncommon in the winter. This time of year is slower for booking trips and I'm typically booked 1-3 days a week till spring time when it gets very busy. But for those who want to get out and fish there is plenty of great fishing and great weather days available here in Texas. Often times you'll have the whole lake to yourself especially on mid week trips. I want to thank everyone who came fishing with me in 2022 and I look forward to past and future clients in 2023. I will attach pictures of fish catches from this past weeks trips down below.
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