Topwater Toned Down — 69 Fish, Belton Lake Fishing Guide Report, 09 August 2012






This morning I fished with Steve R. of Killeen and his 13 year old daughter, Victoria.


Steve and Victoria with one of the 69 fish we boated today. This hybrid hit a large gizzard shad fished on a downline and was suspended over a 40′ bottom.

Steve recently returned from a 1 year tour in Afghanistan and has been enjoying 30 days of leave which will be coming to a close soon, after which his unit will “reset”. I had the pleasure of taking Victoria on a free SKIFF (Soldiers’ Kids Involved in Fishing Fun) trip over the winter while Steve was serving in harm’s way.

Today we were fortunate enough to see a continuation of the strong topwater action that Belton has offered all week. A little wrinkle in the weather last night brought some late afternoon thunderstorms in, and there was an easterly component to the wind this morning, so, I expected to topwater to be less than what is has been, and it was just that. We had about 40 minutes of action this morning compared to 2 hours’ worth back on Monday, and, there were not near as many fish feeding on the top during this time, but, we stayed up with what fish were there and, by, 7:20, had already boated 43 fish from the vicinity of Area 811/133. A good start!!

The fishing never did get really strong the rest of the morning, so, we had to “peck” here and there to put together the rest of our catch.

Our first run of average success came at Area 833/214 where we consistently caught white bass and hybrid stripers on downriggers running modified Pet Spoons targeting suspended fish in this area. We boated 11 fish here.

Our next run of average success came at Area 1120 where we boated 3 fish on live bait (2 keeper hybrid and a blue cat). Steve just loved to hear that bait-clicker go off!!

Our last bit of success came when we returned to Area 214 after seeing some brief topwater churning there. We boated 1 keeper hybrid and a channel cat there.

As we finished up our day, we put in a final 20 minutes or so showing Steve and Victoria how to bait up for sunfish so that they could do some fishing and expect success from the bank. We broke out the slipfloat rigs, baited up with maggots and put a mixed bag of 10 fish on the counter in no time, including bluegill, green sunfish, and black-tail shiners.

We ended the day with a tally of 69 fish.

TALLY = 69 FISH, all caught and released

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS:

Start Time: 6:20a

End Time: 10:40a

Air Temp: 76F at trip’s start.

Water Surface Temp: 85.7F

Wind: SSE7 at sunrise, changing to SSW5 by 9:00a and until trip’s end.

Skies: Skies were fair and ~40% cloudy.








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