Pre-Frontal Fishing on Belton, 73 Fish (A.M. Trip) , 22 Dec. 2011






This morning I met up with long-time clients Mark L. and his 5th grade son, Garrison. The two were accompanied by grandpa “Gramps” Chet visiting from Canada. We fished on Belton Lake for a shot at some hybrid striped bass.

Mark and Garrison pose with Mark’s biggest fish ever caught!

(L to R) Chet, Garrison, and Mark all kept their jigging technique consistent and the white bass responded once the winds picked up.

Garrison was tickled about catch two fish at a time on the umbrella rig!!

Mark and I were back and forth by text and e-mail for about a week trying to nail down a good fishing day based on weather before settling on this time and date. With front after front coming down and no stability in the weather, the forecasters have a tough time getting it right more than a day or two out.

This morning’s starting conditions were tough, with clearing skies following a decent rain event the night before, and with near calm conditions.

Prior to our start this morning I watched birds work over Area 998 for about 15-20 minutes, but, by the time we got to them, the fish had dissipated.

We took advantage of the still low light levels around sunrise time and began searching shallow. We found fish between Areas 709 and 437, but after stopping to try slabbing for them 3 separate times and coming up with nothing, I decided we needed to downrig to get our baits in front of a lot of inactive fish hoping to find a few willing biters among them. We set up first with a silver Pet Spoon and a White Willow on separate ‘riggers. The White Willow seemed to get the nod from the fish, so, we changed both rods over to the White Willow. We just about wore a hole in the water between Areas 709 and 437, but picked up a fish on just about every pass, taking our tally up to 14 fish. Garrison was very curious about the umbrella rig that I had on board and have begun experimenting with, so, after boating a few fish for each person, we tied the umbrella rig on and began using it behind the downrigger. We caught 1 white bass on our first pass, then, to Garrison’s delight, we caught a double on our second pass (2 white bass). Later, Chet picked up a yellow cat as we ran the rig near bottom. In all, we boated 18 fish in about 2 hours’ time under these bright, windless conditions, all on downriggers.

Around 9:45, a westerly wind began to blow at around 6mph. I gave it about 15-20 minutes to see if it would be consistent, and it was. We made a move to Area 968/983 which was being impacted by this wind, and I found fish on sonar along the breakline here. We made a number of “short hops” all in this general vicinity along the break, and very quickly added 48 fish to our tally — all white bass, and most smallish, but the action was welcome and the fact that these fish responded to a slabbing technique was icing on the cake, especially with a youngster aboard.

Around noon this area had played out and we began to make our way back in. Since we got off to a slow start, I decided to extend the trip a bit, so we made one last stop at Area 1000. We found one very tightly bunched school of white bass here — so tightly bunched, in fact, that one side of the boat produced and one side did not (with boat width and rod length considered, that’s about 13 feet apart which goes to show how loathe fish are to move about when the feeding window shuts).

By 1pm or so we’d done all we were going to do and called it a day with exactly 73 fish boated including white bass, hybrid stripers (one of which was Mark’s largest fish ever caught to date), and a single yellow cat.


TALLY = 73 FISH, all caught and released


Start Time: 7:45a

End Time: 1:00p

Air Temp: 47F at trip’s start.

Water Surface Temp: 56.0F.

Wind: Winds were near calm at sunrise, with a marked increase to W6 from 10:00 to 12:00.

Skies: Skies were fair and cloudless.








Pre-Frontal Fishing on Belton, 68 Fish (P.M. Trip), 22 Dec. 2011






This evening I met up with long-time Killeen resident Charles B. Charles retired from the U.S. Army as a senior NCO and now works at the VA Hospital in Temple. He a good man with a heart for people who are hurting. We fished on Belton Lake because in all the time he’s lived in the area, he’d not been out on Belton before (and because I thought the fishing would be good today!).


Charles and I joked a bit about quantity (which we got tonight) versus quality (which, honestly, we didn’t) before I snapped this photo.





After about an hour’s break following the conclusion of my morning trip, I digested some lunch, neatened up the boat, and talked with Charles about our gameplan for the afternoon. I let him know it’d probably start off slow and build toward sunset.

We put 5 white bass in the boat at the very first place we stopped at after noticing a few terns looking “edgy” over top of Area 998.

After that action evaporated quickly, we spent a fishless hour or so searching under near-calm conditions finding a few fish on top of Area 211, which gave up 6 fish and then slacked off.

By around 3pm, a WNW wind began to push and slowly build up to around 9mph (the strongest wind of the day). The fish responded slowly but surely. We got on a few more fish (7 whites) at Area 960 but didn’t like the lack of bait here so we moved once again.

We headed to Area 302 after seeing some bottom-hugging sonar signatures and hovered above these fish while jigging for them. As soon as we let down we were fast into fish and the more we caught and the closer it got to sunset the harder the fish bit. We boated exactly 29 fish here before spotting some good-looking tern and gull action at Area 1001.

We made the move to Area 1001 and put a final 21 fish in the boat here as the fish put the feedbag on both in advance of dark and an approaching cold front. Interestingly, we didn’t pick up any hybrid amongst these fish, nor did the birds work over these fish with anywhere near the intensity with which the fish fed on bait here.

Every single fish we caught tonight was caught using a vertical jigging technique with a 3/4 oz. TNT slab. Occasionally, toward sunset, I through in an “easing” tactic and did get hit on that, but, by and large, the jigging stroke was the gamewinner tonight.

TALLY = 68 FISH


Start Time: 1:30p

End Time: 5:40p

Air Temp: 62F at trip’s start.

Water Surface Temp: 56.0F.

Wind: Winds were near calm at start with a WNW wind picking up at 8-9 in the afternoon.

Skies: Skies were fair and cloudless.