Confidence — The Best Lure in the Tackle Box, 159 Fish, Belton Fishing Guide Report, 16 Aug. 2012






This morning I welcomed long-time client Ryan S. of Temple aboard. On Ryan’s last trip his wife, Lacey, landed the current Catch & Release lake record hybrid striper. I wasn’t sure how we could beat that!


Ryan with 1 of 15 hybrid we took on large topwater plugs during a 25 minute feeding spree.


If Ryan is nothing else, he’s persistent. He’s been in this area several years now working through his residency at Scott & White hospital and recently landed a full-time physician’s job there upon concluding his residency. A “toy” in the form of a 22′ NauticStar center console recently found it’s way into his garage, so, he’s really stepped up his efforts on trying to locate fish on his own. For various reasons (which we discussed and worked on resolving) he’d met with little success so far. Today was intended as a confidence booster.

As we got going pre-dawn this morning, we looked for some topwater action but found none in the fairly heavy chop of the SSE wind already blowing 10mph. We did find bait and suspended fish where we’d hoped to see some topwater, so, we took advantage of what we did find, put downriggers to work for us, and came up with 8 fish, all white bass, at Area 014/133, including a double (two fish caught at the same time on the same rod) — always fun!!

We next headed to the vicinity of Area 188 where, after spending a little while fishing with live shad (for 1 blue cat and 1 channel cat), we saw some surface action erupt. We got into the fray pretty quickly and, by the time all was said and done, boated exactly 20 fish here including 15 hybrid and 5 white bass of which ~12 of the hybrid went just-keeper size (it is pretty uncommon to catch many keeper hybrid from off the surface, so we were particularly please with this!). We started off throwing small shad imitators on a Cork Rig, but, when the hybrid smashed the cork instead of the imitator, we knew we had to increase the size of our offering. This stood in stark contrast to the very small fish that our downrigger-caught fish vomited up, and in stark contrast with the preference the fish showed today for smaller shad (at least the few willing to hit live shad). After the topwater action died, we continued to work the area over with slabs using a lift-drop method and Ryan did well on that method.

We next worked in the vicinity of Area 1106 with downriggers to find fish and then with live shad to zero in on them. We caught 1 white bass on the ‘rigger, then e-anchored, then boated 2 keeper hybrid and 1 blue cat on the live shad before things got difficult.

We finally left this area behind and headed to Area 1126. We found abundant, heavily schooled, bottom-oriented white bass here inhabiting the bottom 4 feet of the water column in ~31 feet (just above the thermocline). We literally sat on top of these fish for 2 hours and 45 minutes boating fish non-stop the entire time. The bite was strongest at first, but never stopped over the entire time span. Our best tactic was smoking and lift-dropping 3/4 oz. TNT 180 slabs (silver and white). We decided to stop at exactly 125 fish taken off of this one area. Of these fish, only 1 was a keeper hybrid, and only 4 others were short hybrid; the balance consisted of all white bass ranging from some short 6-7″ fish, up to some nice, beefy 13+ inch fish.

This trip was intended to be a confidence booster. Ryan walked away more confident in his sonar interpretation skills, more confident in solving the location puzzle for summertime fish (above the thermocline!), more confident with a handful of methods for taking these fish from on top, from off the bottom, or suspended in between, and more confident his ability to formulate a fishing plan and know when to stick with it and when to flex.

TALLY = 159 FISH, all caught and released

back to home page

TODAY’S CONDITIONS:

Start Time: 6:30a

End Time: 2:45p

Air Temp: 80F at trip’s start.

Water Surface Temp: 85.6F

Wind: SSE10 at sunrise and increasing to S12 by trip’s end.

Skies: Skies were 60% cloudy at trip’s start, clearing to fair and cloudless by trip’s end.