A Young Man with a Plan — Belton Fishing Guide Report — 24 Fish — 02 Feb. 2012






Today I held off fishing until the afternoon as the forecast called for dead calm and foggy conditions through noon. The calm and fog did happen and lingered until around 2pm.






Eric and I had to work for ’em tonight, not giving up until the fish absolutely quit well beyond the sunset obscured by clouds.

At 2:15 I met Eric M. of Belton at the ramp. Eric has fished with me twice before on the occasions of his 16th and 17th birthdays, courtesy of his grandma, Sandra. Today he was back at it a few days in advance of his 18th birthday.

After we greeted one another, I asked him straight away, “So, what are you planning to do with your life?” It was beyond encouraging to hear the young man rattle off exactly what he intended to do and why he intended to do. Eric’s plans are to graduate high school (he’s all but got that one in the bag), then attend college for at least 2 years, then begin applying to get into a police academy to begin a career in law enforcement. He’s already worked his way into tagging along on “courtesy patrols” so he can be familiar with lingo, operations, expectations and more. I wish we had more young men thinking ahead like this.

As for the fishing … we had to work for every fish we caught today, but, we finally put together a fair catch.

After launching at 2:15, the first significant winds of the day came up at 2:45 and blew for about 30 minutes before dying back down. During this time we found fish right on top of Area 930 and vertically jigged for them resulting in 8 caught fish and about 6 more missed as Eric got “warmed up”.

After this brief spurt, we went fishless for nearly 2 hours as the winds just puffed, and any birdlife we found rested on the water’s surface.

As dusk approached, we hit Area 163 and almost as soon as we arrived the few birds we saw there began to take wing and search. 5 birds turned to 10, then 10 turned to 40 and all of the sudden it was game-on for about the last hour of light.

We vertically jigged and “eased” with 3/8 oz. TNT slabs. We found silver outperformed white in the clear water here. In all we boated 16 more fish in this area.

When all was said and done we’d boated 2 dozen fish for our efforts. As we returned to the ramp under the cover of darkness, some rain began to fall stinging our faces pretty good, but at the same time giving us hope that this Spring will see the end of the drought.


TALLY = 24 FISH all caught and released

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Start Time: 2:15

End Time: 6:40p

Air Temp: 65F at trip’s start.

Water Surface Temp: 57.0F.

Wind: Winds were SE2-3 building to SE6-7.

Skies: Skies were grey following the clearing of fog that lasted until 2:00p.