GUN BARREL CITY, Texas — This weekend marks the unofficial start of summer and hotter temperatures can make us all slow down, even the fish. In this week's Hooked On East Texas, we'll give you some tips to keep them biting.
The spawn is over and the fish are moving out to their summer weather pattern. We went to Cedar Creek Lake and fished with Herbeck's Lone Star fishing guide Brent Herbeck.
The first tip is obvious. Early morning is the best time. The cooler water temperature makes the fish hungry and aggressive.
“Right now that we're using have a lot of luck on, this is just a regular slab, this one looks like the bait that they're eating. This is the shad," Herbeck explained.
Shad are small baitfish that are plentiful in Texas lakes. Each shad can produce up to 200,000 offspring during spring and bass love them.
“We're in the middle of another shad spawn, and I cleaned a bunch of fish the other day, and they're all loaded. Like they had six or seven of them inside of them. Like they're eaten that stuff big time," Herbeck said.
We chose to fish with artificial baits. They can be made of plastic or metal. It takes technique to make them look real.
“We're fishing in, you know, six to 12 feet of water. Let it sink to the bottom and we're slowly retrieving, those bass are following in and grabbing it because when they're laying deep on the water just flat on the bottom," Herbeck said.
Bass are closer to bottom because the deeper water is cooler. This morning, we found the water temperature in the mid-70s by mid-morning. The challenge is finding the bass the day after thunderstorms.
“With all the rain, we've seen some surfacing fish in the morning, but it's been very sporadic. We're having more luck with the fish, they're just after these big rainstorms. They're going right to the bottom and they're just laying there. So we're trying to stir them up," Herbeck said.
We were able to stir them up, there was a point in the trip when it seemed we were catching a fish on every other cast. Cliff Holubec, angler who was also in the boat. He’s fishes Cedar Creek Lake a lot and seemed to catch fish one fish after another. His advice, stay with what’s working.
“You always try what you did before you know it’s been said, don't leave fish to find fish. Well don't change the pattern when you know it's working. If you don't work, then you got to change the pattern," explained Holubec.
Cliff’s approach pays off. He caught a large hybrid. Herbeck legally tagged the fish. It’s his citizen scientist project to track fish movement on Cedar Creek. The tag includes Herbeck’s name and number in hopes other anglers call and report their catch.
“As an example somebody catches one a couple of weeks ago, called me he caught this white he thought this hybrid thing 25 miles north of here at Coffee Ceek and in four feet of water," Herbeck said.
Biologists say it's not uncommon for white bass to move twenty five miles during the spring spawn as they search for a suitable area to lay eggs. We lost track of the total number of fish we caught but Herbeck's tips certainly put fish in the boat on this trip.