Belton Lake Fishing Guide Report — 07 July 2010 — 199 Fish






I fished a half-day morning trip with Dave and Jamie S. of Salado today. Dave is a defense contractor and just returned home from Afghanistan, and Jamie teaches performing arts in our local school district. We were originally scheduled to fish at Stillhouse, but, after doing a scouting trip of just 2 hours on Belton last night, I had a feeling things were going to be good today. This “hunch” was due to the fact that I saw a lot of fish on sonar poised to come shallow and feed right around sunset, but, just about the time the feed should have kicked in, a rainshower hit, dropping over a 1/4 inch of rain over a 25 minutes span and took the winds from calm to around 12 mph from the E. Long story short, the fish went to bed without supper, so to speak, which can make for some great morning fishing.

Jamie landed this nice hybrid on a Pet Spoon worked down at 24 feet over a 40 foot bottom.


Dave with 1 of the the 199 fish we boated today in what was the strongest topwater action I’ve seen on Belton in a long time. This one blasted a bladebait.

We got on the water at 6:20, and headed to Area 012. No sooner did I cut the outboard and drift to a stop, then we sighted the first topwater action of the day about 80 yards to the E. of us. We got into those fish with bladebaits and by the time the last fish sounded Dave and Jamie had boated 31 fish consisting of a mix of white bass and small hybrid. We lift-dropped blades poking around for bottom-oriented and suspended fish, but to no avail.

We next moved to between Areas 487 and 488 and downrigged with one Pet/Licker combo and one solo Pet. Our first hookup came rather quickly — a nice, keeper hybrid displayed by Jamie in the photo above. We landed 3 white bass in this area as well and then continued the hunt. At this point Jamie had to depart, but Dave and I stuck with it as he was anxious to learn and was doing one of the things he’d dreamed about doing while overseas.

We searched a few areas with sonar, but didn’t find much until I caught a glimpse of some topwater action in the distance while scanning with my spotting scope. We zipped over to Area 478 and were pleased to find the fish going nowhere in a hurry. We fished over these topwater feeding fish for just shy of an hour and took our tally from 35 fish to 95 fish over this span of time. By the time the action had ended, it was still, bright, hot, and humid, but Dave was determined that we could boat just 5 more fish to make it an even 100 for the day, so, given it was now only about 10:30, we continued the search.

I took us over to Area 512 and, as we approached, I saw a single, small school of white crop up and then sound very quickly. We hung in the area, as some heavy clouds were now beginning to build in the SE. We waited about 10 minutes, and no sooner did the first cloud obscure the sun, then the fish just went ballistic. There were literally several acres of fish feeding hard on shad ranging from ~1 1/8 inches up to 3+ inches from here over to Area 154. We stayed hard after these fish for a solid hour, and took our tally from 95 fish up to 199 fish. As the clouds began to thicken, it began to sprinkle, then downpour, then a light ESE breeze began. The fish continued feeding as the rain began and after it intensified, but once the breeze began, they were done for good.

We ended our trip — my most productive trip of the year thus far — with 199 fish, all of which were white bass and hybrid striped bass.

TALLY = 199 FISH, all caught and released


Today’s Conditions:

Start Time: 6:25a

End Time: 11:45a

Air Temp: 76F at trip’s start, heading towards the mid-90’s.

Water Surface Temp: ~83.5F

Wind: Winds were light and variable the entire trip, until rainshower induced light E. winds began around 11:20.

Skies: Skies were clear and bright with clouds slowly building in the south, but which never reached our area until after the trip concluded.