I have been very busy guiding this week! I love fishing and can't get enough of it, so no complaints here! Tuesday morning I had the pleasure of fishing with a teacher from the same school my girlfriend teaches at. The pressure was on to put them on fish, and boy did Lake Travis deliver! For fear of over exaggerating we caught around 35 fish for a morning half day trip. Right now the fish are schooling and if you know the right places to target them and can use your sonar effectively you can really load the boat. Every spot we hit that morning produced fish with several good size bass in the mix. The trip went so well it gave me some inspiration to fish that evening. Every Tuesday in the summer Texas Tournament Zone puts on an evening fishing tournament out of Mansfield Dam park. I entered it solo and sure enough the fish were still there! I ended up catching a 5.5 pounder and WON the tournament fishing solo! I also fished today with an evening half day trip and the bite was almost as good! We caught over 20 fish, and that was with a dad and his 8 year old daughter. Naturally the quantity of fish landed goes way up with experienced anglers, but honestly I get more satisfaction out of teaching new anglers how to fish and seeing the joy of fighting a big bass. The bite I have been on is a lot of swimbait fishing... The benefits of this is you don't need to cast super accurately, the fish hit the bait hard so there is no mistaking the bites, and the numbers of fish are way up. The bass on Travis will continue to do this for another month until they move out deep offshore. Now is a great time to get out there while the weather is good and the fish are biting. Tight Lines!

Yesterday morning I had the pleasure of taking Caleb and his son Clayton out on Lake Travis. Some of my favorite trips are when parents bring their kids with... watching them hook and land a fish all by themselves is awesome. The fishing is still very good on Lake Travis. If you are considering a trip I highly recommend in getting out there within the next 3 weeks. Once it starts to get hot and the boat traffic gets heavy on the weekends, the bite tends to only be good in the morning and evening. After about 10AM that bite dies off heavily and the fish get lethargic. Yesterday that was not the case. We started by running up into Sandy Creek and trying a couple spots. The first area we hit definitely didn't lack fish. They were busting the surface all around us, we probably saw over 100 fish jump. Despite this the bite was tough, we caught one that spit up shad but they were super tiny shad, like less than an inch long. Those small Keitech swimbaits I talk about work great, but even those were slightly too big for those fish. I have a few idea how to get them to bite, so stay tuned and I will report back if I can trick them into eating a lure. The morning was very cloudy and humid out, but around 8:30am the sun peaked out and the bite turned on. We bounced around to several spots I have been finding schooling fish and it was a steady pick through out the day. The combination of the sun coming out and a little bit of wind really turned on the bite and made the trip! We had a blast after that! A couple tips for you... if you are out there early start with a moving bait. I personally like to throw a little larger swimbaits like a big Keitech Fat Swing Impact, a Heddon spook, an underspin, or a chrome rattle trap. With the fish being more active early you can get away messing around with the moving bait of your choice. Once it gets a little later in the morning I have been throwing two things... a 4" Keitech Easy shiner on a small lead head, and an Alabama rig. I like to fish them fairly slow, but something I have noticed is that every once and a while you'll have a problem with the fish biting the bait and missing it, or biting off the tail. Speed up your retrieve and don't give those fish a chance to really look at the bait before hitting it. You can get bit fishing jigs and plastics too, but right now while the shad are doing their thing the moving bait bite is way more productive. If you are considering a fishing guide in Austin give me a call. Lake Travis is fishing well and I would love to put you on some fish!

Yesterday Ander and I hit Lake LBJ in his boat. We were trying to cover water and keep checking out the lake while its low. This is a great time to scout the lake and find brush and rock piles that normally would be underwater, that you would need electronics to see. The fish are definitely pre spawn, no doubt about that. We have had some warm weather this week and the lake is in a warming trend. I saw coves with water as warm as 65 degrees! Most of the main like in in the high 50's though. Fall through early spring is one of my favorite times to throw red and orange baits. Red traps, red or orange square bills, and red spinner baits are some of my favorite moving baits to throw. Yesterday we did most of our work with a red or orange 1.5 squarebill. One thing we noticed though was that the majority of fish were only hooked by the back hook. Typically this means the fish are not fully committing to the bait, otherwise you would catch more fish with the entire bait in their mouth or at least with both trebles stuck in their face. Typically there are two... kind of three, things I will do to help with this, change color is usually the first. Yesterday however I tried some other colors and I got more bites on the red and orange baits. Next thing I will do is switch size of baits, either up size or downsize... a 2.5 KVD or a larger 6th Sense crush is a great bait to up to. Lastly, the "kind of" third thing I do is switch out the back hook for a larger stronger treble hook. One size larger treble hook usually won't affect the baits action too much, but make a couple short practice casts and watch out the bait moves in the water. I'm a big fan of some sharp Gamakatsu hooks, but honestly anything other than the stock hooks is an upgrade. (At last for Strike King, their hooks are too thin in my opinion) This time of year you should be looking for pre spawn areas. Funnel points such as the two points that lead into a canal or cover are good. This is a great place to start, but keep an eye on water temp. This time of year fish are sensitive to water temperature and favor warmer water. Shallow spawning flats will always warm quicker than deep coves... think about it, there is so much more water to warm up. Look for really wide contour lines on your graph when looking for spots. Typically these kinds of coves will warm the fastest and attract fish. Experiment with moving baits and throw jigs at isolated cover you find. The next couple of months are my favorite time of year to fish. I absolutely hate the cold and am looking forward to some warm weather and the fish to start spawning! I know I always say this, but hit up my calendar now and find a date that works for you! Spring time is my busy season and if you want a Friday or weekend trip you'd be wise to book in advance. Lake Travis will also be picking up soon... once those water temps rise a few more degrees that lake is going to bust loose!

Yesterday I headed out to LBJ to scout a little and just to capitalize on how good the fishing has been. I guide a lot and spend a lot of time on the water, but I never get enough. I would fish every single day if I could! Yesterday it seemed like every fish I caught was a nice sized healthy fish. I also finally ran into a few LBJ donkeys that I've been looking for! So the nitty gritty fishing details you are here for... Water temp was 54-56 degrees, yesterday was a lot sunnier out than it has been. All that sun light also helped push some of those fish up into the shady side of the docks. (What few docks are still in the water that is) Sorry to tell you but the fish aren't on just one pattern right now. I found fish both deep and shallow. I've been catching fish out of one foot of water and fish out of twenty feet of water. Something I have noticed though is that they are not super deep... I enjoy fishing deep offshore spots and I have yet to catch a fish in any water deeper than 20 feet. Lake LBJ is nowhere near as deep as Lake Travis is, so that can help you eliminate some water, but still leaves a lot of areas to cover. I recommend spending a lot of time graphing right now, especially with the lake so low. Those shallow rock piles have been producing well for me when the shoreline bite with moving baits is slow. I'm going to let y'all in on one of my little guide session tips... On Lake LBJ fish love rock piles. Everyone knows that...but how do you find them? Just randomly graphing for hours and hours? You might find a little honey hole that way but its kind of like finding a needle in a haystack. Here is what I do on LBJ... study the shoreline! Especially right now with the lake low. If you are in a cove with visible granite boulders, small rocky points (not main lake primary points, just a little outcropping from the shore) along the shoreline, or little rock gardens near the waters edge, there is a good chance that the topography under the waterline is similar. Use what you see on the shore to point you towards places to look for rock piles. Get on your map and look for the depth you have been catching fish in. (With a Lakemaster map in a Hummingbird there is a setting to highlight your target depth) Now use this to find coves that have the water depth you want but also rock along the shoreline. Now start to graph those areas you see those exposed boulders and the majority of the time you will find more rock! I also recommend combining this with locating high percentage areas on your map such as ledges, drains, or points. The more features an area has that bass tend to be attracted too, the higher percentage that area will produce fish. Ideally I like to find rock piles that are at least a few feet off the bottom and aren't just scattered chunk rock. Look at the length of the shadow on your side imaging to get an idea of the height of the rocks you are looking at. A lower frequency when graphing for rock piles works well as its a broader band and will cover a lot of water. Rocks are hard (crazy I know!) and will show up very well defined no matter the frequency you are using. Let me give you one more tip... Once I have identified a rock pile that looks promising start adding waypoints. Here's the tip... don't just drop one way point! Your graph can hold thousands of waypoints, don't be lazy... use the side imaging picture and put way points on four corners of the rock pile, or if its a long ledge of rocks put several way points going up and down it. This aids in knowing the best angle to cast at the spot from. Label your waypoints or type notes into the note section if there is something unique about what you have found. This way in the future when its not fresh in your mind you will have an idea the shape and layout of the rock pile. Ideally you want to make a few casts and run your bait along side the edge of those rocks... this will drastically improve the odds of your cast being in that perfect spot. Even with a GPS zoomed all the way in its impossible to be so pin point accurate that you know exactly where to cast, but I am all about doing everything I can to improve my odds of getting a bite. Right now I would recommend a smaller profile jig with a chunk style trailer. I've been throwing a home made PB&J jig with a Net Bait mini paca craw. I also have been catching them on my trusty drop shot. As I've said before, slow down once you start feeling the rocks. The shallow bite has been hot so lets not leave that out. Cover water, cover water, cover water... the fish tend to stack up so once you find a shoreline that you've caught multiple off of, I recommend going back later in the day and fishing it again. 10% of the shoreline holds 90% of the fish it seems like. Craw color square bills, small lipless crank baits (go light or you will catch all that snot grass off the bottom), and chatter baits have been producing. Don't forget to pay attention to your text book spo

I've been busy Striper fishing on Lake Travis lately, which is a blast, but I needed to get back to my favorite thing.. bass fishing! This past Sunday I had a cancelation which opened up my day. Rachel and I decided to head out to LBJ and look around since its been a little while since I have been out there. The last time I was out there I stumbled upon the ultimate brush pile! It was super hot that day and I didn't get to fish it very long since my dog was getting super hot. Sunday I pulled up on it and it was LOADED! Schools of shad, Crappie, and bass... big bass! I threw a few lures at it and hooked one on a dropshot... nothing worth photos. I left and tried some other water with the plan of coming back to that brush pile later in the day. That was a good idea! Watch the video and see why! One of my specialities is that I love using electronics to find fish! There are a ton of great guides in this area, but none of them have the electronic set up that I do. I have my boat rigged for offshore fishing and picking apart offshore structure. If you would like to learn bass fishing from a different approach, give me a call and book a trip!

Last night was an incredible night of fishing! We totally lucked out and caught a break in the weather. It has been raining in Austin all week, but last night around 6pm it let up. The trip took off at 7PM and we had amazing weather. Very cool, no rain, and actually had some very cool fog to cool things down even more. We started the evening out by catching bait, it seems the smaller sized baits have been working well. If you catch some bigger bluegills though, don't be afraid to drop them down too! The bite was later as usual, it was a slow pick until around 10PM they started moving! We picked up a double and had steady action until midnight. The limit is 5 per person and they have to be 18". Once we caught 10 of them we headed to the barn to call it a night! The fishing has been very good lately. However, I have a feeling it will be tapering off as soon as we get a good cold from come through. These fish are extremely sensitive to temperature and I believe that is a big factor as to why I am catching them so consistently where I am. If you have been on the fence to book a trip, now is the time to do so! Like I said, once the water temps start to drop off they will get harder to catch. Big fish over the night looked to be around 10-11LBS. My scale finally kicked the bucket and I haven't picked up a new one yet. It fought like hell and definitely was a great birthday present for my client!