One Saturday, Three Generations, Seventy-Four Fish, 05 May 2012, Belton Lake Fishing Guide Report






This morning I fished with returning guests Grandpa Jim S., his daughter, Shena, and Shena’s son, James.

Jim (R), James (C), and Shena (L) with a pair of hard-pulling hybrid boated at the same time. The fish were on a real spree today, feeding for nearly 4 hours straight.

This Belton Lake hybrid, caught on a live shad, was James’ first “big fish” caught while angling from a boat. Can you tell his grandpa is happy for him?






This father-daughter pair has been out with me on seven previous occasions, but today was a little different. Young James, now 7 years old got to come along for his first boat fishing trip ever.

Word on the bank (kind of like word on street) said the shad run was getting slim. So, as insurance against a baitless trip, I netted shad the night before on Stillhouse and put 109 baits in the tank. When I arrived at Belton, the shad were running full strength and I doubled my on-hand quantity to 220 so as to prepare for Monday morning’s trip, too.

At 7:15a we were off and running. Around 7:35 we encountered strong topwater action which began near the buoy at Area 492, then commenced SE toward Area 155, then SW toward area 687. We kept up with the fish with Jim and Shena on the front deck casting bladebaits and young James and I in the back downlining live shad. We all caught fish, but the bait fished down around 24 feet definitely was producing larger fish than the artificials were producing when fished up near the surface.

Eventually, the fish “hunkered down” near area 687 and we went with an “all-bait” program and were scarcely able to keep 4 rods in the water. In fact, for a 30 minute span we took it down to just 3 rods as that was all we could keep baited and tended to.

Most of the fish we caught today were hybrid in the 16-17 inch range, as well as some good quality 13 to 13.75 inch white bass.

After Area 687 cooled off, I observed a few birds working over Area 689. We motored over there and found fish feeding throughout the entire water column from the surface down to 26 feet.

We put our baits in the middle third of the water column and continued to catch mainly 16-17 inch hybrid with perhaps 1 in six or seven exceeding the 18 inch “legal” mark.

After all of the surface action cleared by around 11:30, I was still marking fish in the lower third of the water column and these fish were positioned off bottom indicating they were still willing to feed. We worked bladebaits down deep and off bottom for these fish and put our final 11 fish in the boat in this manner. These were all average white bass and 11-14 inch hybrid.

Our big laugh for the trip came when little James was playing with the dead baitfish I’d stored on top of the bait tank for chum. Grandpa made a corrective comment but then softened the correction with, “…but I guess young boys will just do that kind of thing” to which little James replied, “But Grandpa, you were a young boy too one time.” We all found that very humorous!

By trip’s end we’d boated 74 fish including 1 largemouth bass, 11 keeper hybrid, and the balance being a mix of short hybrid and white bass.

TALLY = 74 Fish, all caught and released.


back to home page


TODAY’S CONDITIONS:

Start Time: 7:15am

End Time: 12:30pm

Air Temp: 74F at trip’s start.

Water Surface Temp: 75-76F

Wind: Winds were S9-11 for the entire trip.

Skies: Skies were hazy but bright, clearing to fair by mid-morning.

Environmental Note 1: Just as they did on the morning after the full moon in April, the shad spawn ran hard this morning, the morning after the May full moon.

Environmental Note 2:

Elevation was 594.01 ASL releasing water at 104 cfs, with normal full pool at 594.








Leave a Reply