Lake Travis Striper Update Sunday 4/22

[x60pilot]

I was able to get out on Travis this Sunday for the first time since October. I fished Cypress Creek and caught nothing. Headed for the Dam caught a small and a good sized White Bass around 0900. Trolled the Dam area, Thermocline around 25’ but no bites. Left the Dam headed North along the East Bank of the islands about a half mile from the Dam, headed East out over the main body and caught 2 20” stripers in 135’ of water about 20’ down at 1030. I spotted what I thought was a school busting the top water about a mile North, as I was headed in the wrong direction and 2 bass boats were closing in on that spot. I figured if it was what I thought, they would have first dibs.

IMG_0948.jpg

Thanks to RO, I was going to mention that it is safe (10’-14’) to cross between the Mansfield Swimming area and the islands; it always saves time.

Weather: Bluebird Outside Temp: 80 degrees Water temp: 70 degrees surface
Location: North of Mansfield Dam 0.5 mi Lure: ¾ oz. Jig head with 4” swimbait White Pearl
Method: Trolling 2.5 mph Time: 1030 hrs (Sunday, April 22, 2012)

[RO]

Cool report brother! Nice to see some stripers being caught out of Travis! The bellies on those look like they were feeding well. Or was there some roe in there? Kinda late for eggs, bet they were busting guts with shad. Cool pic!

[x60pilot]

Hey RO,

It was good to finally pull a striper out of LT and to catch them back to back was awesome. Only found 1 4" shad out of both fish. They were both full of, well, I assumed they were males!? Cooked them on the grill last night with some margaritas.

I don't know if this is well known in the striper community, but I have found an awesome way to prepare the striper in a "half shell" or "half scale" as it were.

[RO]

It is somewhat known among the striper fishers, but you could add a recipe in that cooking/recipes section of the forum on it. I'm always trying to learn new grilling tricks. We have done it with stripers/hybrids like redfish on the halfshell. Mighty tasty indeed!