This morning I met Austin T. and his grandfather, Bill T., at Belton Lake. The winds were high and with an easterly component which rarely bodes well. Suffice it to say that persistence paid off …
Grandpa Bill (foreground) and Austin stuck it out today through 4 very tough hours to cash in on an end-of-trip feeding spree.
As I’ve reported on this blog previously, the shad spawn has ended. This doesn’t mean bait can’t be caught or that fishing live shad won’t work, but, what I’ve found over the years is that the daily, onshore movement of shad right at first light during the spawn tended to concentrate the gamefish in the vicinities where shad could be found, and kept those gamefish there feeding as the shad headed back to deeper water as the morning progressed. Now, the gamefish are generally deeper and are much more widely dispersed.
Additionally, today the wind was up so high that any surface action could not be spotted unless you were right on top of it.
So, we started off at some high percentage areas and, for our efforts, managed to boat just 4 average white bass, all on Pet Spoons, by downrigging them at ~27-30 feet, by 10:15. Other boats, many Belton Lake “regulars” or at least “weekend regulars” were criss-crossing the lake and running sonar telling me no one else was buckled down on fish, either.
At exactly 10:30, in the vicinity of Area 830/1083, as I maneuvered back and forth across the breakline there, I spotted, about 30 yards away, an abundance of shad skipping across the top of the water. I knew these were being pursued by gamefish, so, we immediately put our downriggers back out and went over that area. The closer we got, the more gamefish started showing on sonar. These were definitely white bass and hybrid in feeding mode!
Not 10 seconds after seeing the first few fish on sonar Austin’s rod went down, then Bill’s went down and we landed the first of three doubles that would come over the side in the next 90 minutes. Over that time span, we went on to land exactly 29 more fish including 3 keeper hybrid, some very decent Lake Belton white bass in the 13 inch range, and a few short hybrid, as well. The passage of time and increased recreational boat traffic in the area both eventually led to the tapering off of this action.
The action tracked from NW to SE which was into the wind, and the 18-22 foot depth range seemed to produce best for us. The fish ended up dispersing and settling down to the bottom at Area 1084. The last 20 minutes of the trip we sat right on top of Area 1084 and attempted “smoking” these fish with TNT180 slabs. We managed 6 more fish (5 whites and 1 short hybrid) fishing in this manner before things settled down for good.
This was an odd trip. The “feeding window” of about 90 minutes in length didn’t open until around 10:30 which is unusually late on Belton. Late May is always a time of transition and this year seems to be no exception.
Austin and Bill came ready to fish, but even more ready to learn how to fish. Over the course of the trip both got great exposure to sonar usage and interpretation, to downrigging, and to one vertical jigging tactic used with slabs — that of smoking. They went home itching to try to figure out how to adapt some of these things given their own equipment.
TALLY = 37 FISH, all caught and released
TODAY’S CONDITIONS:
Start Time: 6:30a
End Time: 12:20p
Air Temp: 74F at trip’s start.
Water Surface Temp: 75-76F
Wind: Winds were SSE12 at trip’s start, ramping up to SSE17-19 by 10:30, then tapering off to SSE12 by trip’s end.
Skies: Skies were 60% cloudy on a hazy sky.