20 JUNE 2008






Belton Lake Fishing Report by Belton Lake Fishing Guide Bob Maindelle

Fished a half-day afternoon trip on Belton today with Mike M. of Salado. Mike owns the 3 area Cotton Patch Café restaurants in Central Texas and received a birthday gift certificate from his wife earlier in the year. His main goal was to learn effective techniques he could duplicate when fishing with family and friends. By trip’s end, I’d introduced him to slabbing, downrigging, live shad tight lining, topwater fishing and working a bladebait in shallow water.

Conditions:

Start Time: 3:45p

End Time: 9:15p

Air Temp: 92 at trip’s start, slowly cooling to the mid 80’s by trip’s end

Water Temp: 83.5F

Wind: Light and variable the entire trip following a brief disturbance in the weather pattern which came through the area yesterday morning. That disturbance brought a strong N. breeze during the day, and about ¾” of rain with light thunderstorms overnight.

Skies: Skies began heavy grey and cloudy in the morning following an overnight rain, but had cleared to bright and clear with increasing pressure by sunset.

We fished only 3 areas this afternoon, and found solid fishing at 2 of these.

At Area 192, we identified suspended schools of white bass and hybrids holding in a narrow band at 32 to 35 feet deep over a deeper bottom. This begged for a downrigging approach and that’s what we when with. We started with small presentations and in the end did consistently better with them, but also caught fish on larger presentations, as well. The #13 Pet Spoon was the best performer, with the Lunker Licker doing well, and the Swimmin’ Image accounting for only one fish, albeit the largest hybrid (on the largest bait) taken in this area. The fishing was pretty simple once we found the fish. We did occasionally stop to vertical jig for fish when large schools were seen on sonar close to bottom, but we did poorly with this approach, with only 2 largemouth (about 2.75 pounds each) to show for that effort. We left this area around 7p with 24 fish boated including 2 keeper hybrid, 3 short hybrid, 2 largemouth bass, and 19 white bass ranging from short to 14 inches, with most 11-12 inches.

We next headed to the vicinity of Area 171 and began fishing in 31 feet of water with 2 live shad rigs tracked on sonar. We started here as sonar showed both gamefish and bait in the vicinity with gamefish on or near bottom and bait balled up. We slowly moved shallower as the light faded, and did best in 19-21 feet when all was said and done. As is typical of live shad fishing, we caught fewer fish but of better quality as compared to fishing with the artificals. We landed a nice 15.5″ white bass, a 4 pound hybrid, and a 3 pound largemouth with this tactic.

As sunset approached, topwater feeding fish began to dapple the surface, and we switched over to topwater and bladebaits. We fished until seeing light was gone and put an additional 27 fish in the boat including 2 short hybrids and 25 white bass ranging from 9 to 13 inches.

Enjoyed a boat-to-boat chat with Mr. James Harper, rodbuilder, reel repairman , catfisherman, and Temple PD detective, of Heidenheimer … seemed like a real nice fellow. Following that we headed in and packed it up.


TALLY= 54 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