Fished a half-day morning “Kids Fish, Too!” trip with two young men from Harker Heights — Wes P. and Isaac C. They live right down the street from one another and go to church together and are pretty good boys. We experienced a mix of light topwater and solid mid-depth downrigging today.
WES & ISAAC AND A FEW OF THE 42 WE BOATED ON THIS HOT JUNE MORNING.
“MR. BOB”, AS THE BOYS CALLED ME, AND ONE I TOOK TOPSIDE WITHIN 15 FEET OF THE BOAT — SOUNDED LIKE A GRENADE WENT OFF!
Start Time: 6:30a
End Time: 10:50a
Air Temp: 76F at trip’s start.
Water Surface Temp: ~87F
Wind: Winds were very light from the SSW at sunrise, then around 8:15, turned W, then WNW and picked up speed until around 10:45 when they again slackened.
Skies: Skies were fair at sunrise. There was no cloud cover whatsoever today. Once the sun got up it burnt off the little moisture there was in the air and the skies went clear until a windshift in the afternoon clouded things up.
Environmental Note: This was to be the 1st day of the last 16 not to reach 100+ degrees, as a cool front dropped in turning winds N and creating cloud cover.
As we headed out today we initially searched for topwater action and, as expected on a slack wind, saw little at both Area 056 and in the vicinity of Area 061. Around 7:15, still in the vicinity of Area 061 to 062, a few single largemouths and a few wolfpacks of them began to push shad around. This was very widely distributed and the fish were very particular and did not stay on the surface very long. We stuck with sight casting for just shy of an hour during which time the boys, both amateur casters, only managed one fish, while I only fooled 4. This was too tough to stick with despite the regularity of sightings.
I then trained the boys up on downrigging and they caught on pretty quickly. We were staggering our weights at 25 and 27 feet and immediately got into fish in an area bounded by Area 070 to the north, Area 071 to the east, and Area 467 to the west. The 45 foot mark was our southerly boundary. We took some very solid 14+ inch white bass and some barely keeper sized schoolie largemouth at a ratio of 3 or 4 whites to every one largemouth. We stuck with downrigging from around 8:15 to about 9:30 when a fairly sudden wind shift to the west, accompanied by an increase in wind speed, spurred a brief flurry of topwater action by both largemouth and white bass. Despite the aggressive nature of the fish, the results were similar — I was doing all the catching (3 more black bass in about 8-10 minutes) and the boys were missing their targets — so, we stuck with our strong suit and went back to downrigging. We got right back into the fish at mid-depth and, by 10:45 had put together a total sack of 42 fish including largemouth, white bass, and one token drum.
TALLY = 42 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