Belton Lake Fishing Report by Belton Lake Fishing Guide Bob Maindelle

We had a great start to 2008 today!! Fished a half day morning father/son trip with Joe (dad) and 8th Grader Josh L. of Copperas Cove. We fished 7:15a to 12:05p. Air temp. at launch time was 29F and the water surface temp was 55F. High pressure continued to build in today with high blue skies and a stiff N. wind. Ice formed on the deck until the sun got up high enough to get some radiant heat on it.

I came prepared to fish with slabs, live shad and downriggers, just in case. Truth be known, we really only needed the slabs, but we used all 3 techniques because neither father nor son had fished any of these ways before.

In summary, we jigged with slabs from 7:30 to 10:45 watching both birds on occasion and sonar on occasion to stay with the fish over this period in a stretch from Area 27 to Area 14. We caught a total of 106 fish on slabs including 5 keeper hybrids, 3 largemouth bass, and a mix of 98 small hybrids and white bass. About 60% of the whites were legal, but none exceeded 12 inches. Fish ranged from 23 to 34 feet deep and liked the slab either held still or rising slowly off the bottom.

After this action died, and with the wind picking up substantially, we anchored up at Area 23 in 34 feet of water and fished with live shad on downlines. We immediately picked up our biggest fish of the trip here, a nice 5.00 pound hybrid (the young man, Josh, caught it — dated photo is in the Gallery) and thought we were in for a treat, but we continued to have baits robbed, pecked, and maimed by small white bass and gave up on this area. We then moved to Area 86 in about 40 feet of water and experienced the same assault by small whites. This time, we jigged out of one side of the boat while watching the bait lines out the other, and picked up 2 small whites and a drum on slabs, as well as a drum on one of the baited lines. We noted abundant schools of suspended small whites passing under us as we bait fished, so, realizing things were about to slow to a crawl, we rigged up one downrigger and got a single white bass that way, just because the fellows wanted to try a new technique. By noon we called it a great day and headed in with cold hands and some great pictures to commemorate the trip.

Tally = 112 fish, all caught and released

Bob Maindelle, Owner Holding The Line Guide Service and Kids Fish, Too! Stillhouse Hollow Fishing Guide, Belton Lake Fishing Guide, Lake Georgetown Fishing Guide, Walter E. Long (Decker) Lake Fishing Guide. Offering Salado Fishing, Killeen Fishing and Ft. Hood Fishing