Belton Lake Fishing Guide Report – 02 September 2010 – 90 Fish






I returned to Belton today in hopes of finding a bit of topwater action given the pre-frontal conditions forecast for the day. With several trips booked over the next few days and a mild cold front due to come in tomorrow, I wanted to at least figure out where congregations of bait were located to give us a shot at some fish when they get tough over these next few days until the winds turn back from the south.

1 of 9 keeper hybrid I landed today — 7 on downrigger and 2 casting swimbaits.


Things got started around sunrise (though it was obscured) with some light topwater action for about 40 minutes between Areas 663 and 412. There were short hybrid and a mix of sizes of white bass in on this feed. I found the blade bait worked best as it allowed me to cover top, mid-depth and bottom all with one lure. A big thunderstorm cell S. of Waco fell apart around 8am, and some outflow air from that brought dark skies, a cool N. breeze, and some light rain from 8am to 8:30am and put a damper on the fishing. As soon as that passed and the skies began to brighten, the fish fed again on top for about 10 more minutes. By now I’d bagged 25 fish. Once the last of the topwater died, I moved on scouting for more fish and bait.

I found bait and hybrid striped bass just off bottom in 17-22 feet of water between Areas 437 and 615. I boated 9 keeper hybrid, 1 short hybrid, and 3 white bass here. All but 2 of these came on downrigged P13’s (white) and P14’s (silver). Once this went soft, I moved on.

I found fish just NE of Area 365 on the N facing slope here and vertical jigged and smoked a mix bag of fish including 2 largemouth, 1 crappie, 3 drum, and 3 white bass.

I next moved to Area 508 and fished from there to to the shore. Despite strong sonar readings, I didn’t manage to hook any fish in the deeper water here, but observed fish feeding on the surface now and then toward shore. I crept in there, waited with a Spook Jr. at the ready and cast once the fish broke the surface. I boated 2 smallmouth on back-to-back casts this way — man do those brown bass jump!! Those fish went 14.50 inches and 15.25 inches and were plump and healthy.

I headed to between Areas 387 and 565 and found well-grouped, suspended schools of white bass and short hybrid here on sonar. I buoyed them, came back around with the trolling motor and hovered over them using a slab to jig and smoke for these fish. I boated an additional 23 fish in a very short period of time. When these fish quit, the feed was done, as there was from that point on not a single shad flicking, no more fish surface feeding, no rough fish rolling — just nothing.

I planned to head back in, but, before doing that I wanted to test a new artificial panfish bait by Berkeley as a possible alternative to live worms when fishing with kids. The bait far surpassed my expectations and actually outperformed live bait when you consider the time not spent re-baiting and the time not spent disgorging deeply hooked fish. That was time well spent to gain some confidence in that product before trying it out with kids on board. I boated 18 fish on this bait at Area 663, including 16 bluegill sunfish, 1 longear sunfish, and 1 large blacktail shiner.

In all, I boated 90 fish today and found several concentrations of bait. Hopefully, this bait will stay put through the weather change and take some of the guesswork out of finding them once we return to the water after the front’s passage.

TALLY = 90 FISH, all caught and released


Today’s conditions:

Start Time: 6:50am

End Time: 1:40pm

Air Temperature at Trip’s Start: 74F

Water Surface Temperature: 85.6F

Winds: Variable due to T-storm outflow to the N. and SE breeze in advance of an approaching front

Skies: 60-100% cloud cover with grey cast to the skies.