Belton Lake Fishing Guide Report – 02 July 2009 – 21 Fish (PM Trip)






Fished a short, solo evening scouting trip on Belton Lake this evening. The fishing has been so consistent on Stillhouse that I haven’t made it out to Belton recently. However, knowing that all good things must come to an end, I wanted to keep my finger on the pulse here.

Start Time: 5:45p

End Time: 8:40p

Air Temp: 98F at trip’s start.

Water Surface Temp: ~85.6F

Wind: Winds were steady from the SSE at 7-8.

Skies: Skies were bright and clear with the return of high pressure right over us.



I downrigged nearly the entire time 1) to cover water and watch sonar and 2) because I found very few fish relating to the bottom, rather, they were up suspended near bait.

Getting started, I found a lot of bait along the long breakline stretching from Area 210, through Area 472, to Area 473. The gamefish (white bass, hybrid and largemouth) were hovering off the E. facing slope a bit distant from the bait. I used twin riggers with a Pet and and Image and caught fish equally well on both telling me the bait was on the larger side. After catching my first hybrid on the Image, I switched over to twin Images. After sacking up 9 fish here (1 largemouth, 1 hybrid, 7 whites up to 14 1/8″) I moved elsewhere to explore.

Next stop came at an area triangulated by Areas 214, 474, and 475. With twin Images on the ‘riggers I had immediate and consistent success here boating 2 largemouth, 6 hybrid (all 17-19″), and 4 average white bass.

By this time, the sun was within 20 minutes of setting, so, hoping to spot some topwater white bass action, I headed out and patrolled from Area 133 over to Area 302 but found nothing doing.



TALLY = 21 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








Stillhouse Fishing Guide Report – 02 July 2009 – 49 Fish (AM Trip)






Fished a half-day morning trip on Stillhouse today with Jerry M. and his son, Evan. Jerry is retired military and now works as a military contractor; Evan is a student at Harker Heights High School who recently earned his Eagle Scout badge. Both are solid Christian men.


Father and son with a pair of deepwater white bass.

Start Time: 6:30a

End Time: 11:00p

Air Temp: 75F at trip’s start.

Water Surface Temp: ~85.6F

Wind: Winds were calm with light puffs from due S barely rippling the surface on occasion.

Skies: Skies were bright and clear with the return of high pressure right over us.



I met the fellows dockside and right off the bat had them do a little practice casting as they said it had been over a year since they’d wet a line.

Once they were doing well, we shoved off to search for fish. Things were very quiet until around 7:40 when Area 061 began to show some activity on top; this was very light and scattered — so much so that I started us out with downriggers down. We were immediately hooked up with a schoolie largemouth on a Pet Spoon. I made a few more passes paying more attention to topwater than to sonar.

Soon, consistent topwater action began to crop up in an east-bowing arc from Area 205 to the north, going through Area 459 to the east, and terminating at Area 471 to the south. This action consisted of multiple, congregated wolfpacks of largemouth, most short of legal size, herding young of the year shad to the surface. We all put on doctored 1/8 oz. Rattle Snakies and sight cast to surface feeders. Casts that immediately landed just past the boil and were retrieved right past it almost always got hit. Delayed casts and errant casts took nothing. We chased these fish for about 90 minutes until the sun got so bright they pushed down. We boated 12 fish during this run.

At this point, we started right where the surface action ended (Area 471) with downriggers and got right into some hot white bass action for right at an hour with one or both rods going off nearly as quickly as we could get them down. We added 23 fish to the tally (that’s about a fish every 3 minutes!) in short order including 18 white bass, 3 drum, 2 largemouth. These came on tandem Pets.

Around 10:10, in the vicinity of Area 205, and between there and southwest toward the bank, I spotted consistent largemouth action on the surface (some spotty clouds and bit of a breeze combined to diffract enough light to get them going). I gave the boys a choice of continuing to downrig or try some more sight casting, and they chose the latter.

We stayed on them for about 50 minutes and found these fish much tougher to fool than earlier due to the brighter conditions. Regardless, we boated 4 more blacks during this effort before we had to head back in for Jerry to make an appointment. We’d boated a total of 40 fish by this time.

After dropping the fellows off, I headed back out and experimented with a new approach to catching these stubborn topwater fish. I’ve dubbed this method the “Minus Rig”. For this experiment, I headed over to Area 333 where I’d spotted some topwater largemouth popping small shad as I was carrying Jerry and Evan back in. I got to these fish and found wolfpacks of small fish appearing just briefly due to the brightening and calming conditions building in. I cast the rig to the first bunch of fish that came in range and was immediately hooked up — not a bad start. Long story short, I hooked and landed 9 fish in 11 casts over about a 35 minute period, and made a mental note of some modifications that would make this work even better — more on the Minus Rig later once all the kinks are worked out. By now the wind was dead calm, the surface was light glass, and the mercury had cracked the 90 mark so I headed to the dock.



TALLY = 49 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