Belton Lake Fishing Guide Report – 19 September 2009 – 39 Fish (PM Trip)






Fished an evening half day “Kids Fish, Too!” trip with Andy M. and his kids, Trent (8th Grade) and Molly (7th Grade), all of N. Austin. They’ve just moved to the area from the Cincinnati area and wanted to sample some late summer Texas fishing.

From L to R: Trent, Molly, and Andy. Trent is holding Molly’s fish as she was a bit timid about doing this at first — by trip’s end she was slingin’ ’em back in the water all by herself

Start Time: 2:35p

End Time: 7:45pm

Air Temp: 85F at trip’s start.

Water Surface Temp: ~80.1F

Wind: Winds were barely moving from the NNW the entire trip at 2-4 mph.

Skies: Skies were finally clearing out as the stubborn low pressure system prevalent the last 9 days finally released its grip on the weather and the fishing. It was partly cloudy with a hazy appearance to the patches of clear sky.

We finally got a break on the weather this afternoon. On the heels of a very slow morning trip on Stillhouse, I moved our afternoon trip to Belton which did not experience a dramatic water rise with the heavy rains of last weekend.

This afternoon we found fish progressively shallower, with our first fish caught in 41-44 feet of water and with fish caught around sunset found in 16-18 feet of water.

As we began the day, We put ‘riggers down and searched out fish. We found gamefish with no bait (not a good scenario) in the vicinity of Area 474. We boated 4 white bass and 1 hybrid and lost another hybrid here, all in the first 45 minutes of fishing. Things looked promising given this action in the early hours of the afternoon.

We then searched a few other deepwater areas without success and then headed to Area 187 and to the NW of it. Right up on the highest part of this feature sonar revealed a nice congregation of fish. No sooner had I mentioned what I’d seen on sonar to the kids than a rod went active. We boated a nice hybrid, then continued trolling and picked up a nice white bass. Another pass and another hybrid / white bass combination. The next 40 minutes we continued to comb over the area and regularly picked up white bass ranging from 11 to 12.75 inches — just nice, steady fishing — just right for kids. After a total of 22 fish pulled off this area, we saw nothing more on sonar and moved on.

We relocated on a similar area (Area 150) and were fast to a hybrid and then a white bass as we made our initial approach. The sonar showed such good readings that I buoyed and set everyone up to vertical jig, but, but the time the jigs got down the fish had gone. We never got another fish by any means on this area.

Within 75 minutes of sunset, we were patrolling a NW to SE swath in the vicinity of Area 84 to 147 and were picking up good sonar returns from abundant suspended fish here in ~25-27 feet of water. We ran the downriggers about 2-3 feet off bottom right above the fishes’ heads and began to steadily catch fish. Although we twice saw briefly appearing schools of whites dimple the surface, the weather still wasn’t quite right for topwater to breakout. We stuck with our downrigging regimen and were rewarded with a total of 10 additional fish in this area by nightfall, including 3 hybrid (2 legal, 1 short) and 7 white bass, all of which went better than 12.5 inches.

TALLY = 39 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








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