It’s Nice to “Own” Some Water (Second half of Previous Post)
I never was much at “The New Math,” as it was called back when I entered the sixth grade at Pearland Junior High. That, as much as anything, could probably be attributed to my propensity to pay far more attention to the upcoming weekend’s fishing or hunting trip than the given assignment of the day.
I am, however, an inveterate number cruncher. Good old fractions, decimal points and percentages work just fine for me, and I can’t help but formulate equations into my fishing excursions. So, when Grapevine, Texas striper specialist Ben Moore started talking about his studies in live bait vs. water depth, it was nothing short of intriguing.
A good bit of the fun in fishing rests in the calculations and predictions. In saltwater, it’s the perennial mix of wind, tide, temperature, sun and light. The anticipation of getting it right has on more than a few occasions kept me up late at night.
Every now and then … not too often, but just enough to make it well worth the effort … you figure out something cool. So it is with Moore, who a while back discovered that he holds a fairly exclusive claim to live-baiting the deeper zones of Lake Texoma.
I spoke with Moore right after he and fishing partner L.J. Bybee had hit a great catch of Texoma stripers. Among other fish, they had six linesiders on at once at one point in the trip. One of those, a 33-incher, turned out to be Bybee’s biggest fish to date. The pot-bellied striper (see photo gallery under “Striped Bass”), like all of the rest, ate a Black Salty baitfish. Moore is a longtime fan of I.F. Anderson Farms’ homegrown “designer live bait.”
And, like all the rest, Bybee’s 20-plus-pounder came from deep water … a zone that Moore contends is virtually his own because of the rugged, air-freighted fish from Arkansas.
“Fishing guide Taylor Park (of Taylor Made Adventures) took me out before I bought my boat,” Moore said. (He runs a 22-foot Skeeter ZX Bay, which, among big-water striper enthusiasts, is not at all an unusual choice in watercraft.) “Taylor showed me that there were plenty of fish in the 45- to 50-foot-deep zones,” Moore added, “but they were out of range. We just couldn’t keep shad alive at that depth.
“The Black Salty is another matter,” he continued. “You can’t kill the things. Matter of fact, I take them off the hook and throw them back in the tank for another trip. They actually recover. If you were to pull a net full of baits out of my Salty tank at home,” he explained, “you’d see plenty of fish with scars. You don’t go through them at near the rate you do other live baits.”
Seeing as how I work in the marketing and promotions arena with I.F. Anderson Farms, I think it essential to point out to you that I haven’t solicited Moore’s advice. He buys his baits, and has been doing so for well over a year. So, when he says he “owns the bottom of the lake, anything below 30 feet,” it is his own, unprompted verbiage.
“That big fish came out of 57 feet of water,” Moore told me. “We ran our baits to the bottom and then brought them up about four or five cranks. They were rigged Carolina-style with a one-ounce sliding weight, a bead to protect the knot, a barrel swivel and three feet of 20-pound-test Vanish fluorocarbon leader attached to a 4/0 Gamakatsu ‘Octopus” wide-gapped single hook.
“In a three-minute span we had six rods down at once,” Moore recalled. “I told L.J. that it would eventually happen … we had been scouting the bottom area for the past several trips, and knew it held fish, although the wind was wrong for drifting it … and when it happened, it happened big-time. I was fighting a fish with a rod in my right hand, holding two more rods with fish on in my left and trying to hand one to L.J. One of the fish came off the hook, right as L.J.’s rod up front sounded off.
“That was a killer fish,” Moore continued. “L.J. had the time of his life fighting it. He said he was trying to get into the double-digits, and he definitely got that out of the way. When that fish came to the surface it just raised hell, kicking up a big swirl and a splash.”
Needless to say, Moore and Bybee have the GPS coordinates of that particular locale dialed in to stay.
I’m going to make a trip up to Texoma with these guys sometime this coming fall, most likely with my friend J.P. Greeson of Texas Fishing Forum (who incidentally, also happens to run a 22 Skeeter ZX Bay).
It’ll be great fun to fish with, and compare notes with, a guy who enjoys figuring out the “numbers” of fishing, from GPS to fish-per-bait percentages, as much as I do.
Matter of fact, I’d say the odds highly favor it.
Howdy. I am 
