What Did I Do the First Day After College Finals - Fishing
Clint Taylor
After an extremely long and gruesome semester filled with an abundant amount of homework, studying, and tests I finally was able to get some fishing in. Fishing in Texas during the winter time usually isn't too productive because it can be 20 degrees one day and 80 degrees the very next. All of these temperature changes mean a lot of front changes, which in hand means hard fishing. However, this past week was really stable with temperatures ranging in the 45-75 degree range with no major fronts moving in. I pretty much made my mind up that I was going to go fishing the day after I finished my finals no matter what, but when I noticed that the weather for the past week had been so good, I had a little bit of an optimistic thought that the day could be successful.
Starting my morning off on the Brazos River has always been the same - a top water with no bites at all. If I had to pick a very effective lure, the top water would most definitely be one but for some reason it does not have the best results on the Brazos. I quickly started throwing my Worden's Rooster Tail on my 5' 6" light action spinning rod paired with 4lb. test mono-filament. Suddenly bites started to come from every direction with fun to catch 1 lb. bass. Although they weren't the largest bass, they were extremely fun to catch after a long semester of not much fishing. I also caught a few spotted bass, which I really like to catch because of their strong fight. Although I was having a great time catching 1 lb. bass for about an hour, I decided that I would try to target some larger bass. After all, the Brazos River is were I caught the largest bass I have ever landed - a 12 lb. behemoth.
I tied on a Strike Kind KVD Square Bill Crank Bait and started to launch it out into the water over some rocky structure mixed with some occasional timber. Within a couple of minutes I landed the biggest bass of the day, a nice 3 lb. bass. This bass put up a really good fight and really made the day that much better.
Mixed in with the 15 or so bass was quite possibility my favorite aspect of the day - the scenery. The Brazos River is one of the more scenic rivers in Texas for large cliffs and rugged landscapes, and due to recent rains the water was very clear with a nice flow that allowed for some fun through some faster areas of water. It is for the rivers like the Brazos that keep me coming back to the water time and time again, as it seems like it never gets old catching big bass and paddling through large cliffs with huge boulders. Although the chance of some good fishing like this in the winter is unlikely to happen again anytime soon, this was definitely a day to remember.