This morning I fished on Belton Lake with Javier K. and his 3 sons, Javi, Miguel, and Gabe, ages 17, 15, and 13, respectively.
The Kane boys all celebrate the second keeper hybrid striped bass that we boated today. From L to R that’s Javier, Gabe, Miguel, and Javi.
Javier is a pediatric oncologist at the new Scott & White Children’s Hospital and is a new arrival here in Central Texas, having previously worked at St. Jude’s in Memphis,TN. When Javier first contacted me, he simply wanted to give his boys a good introduction to fishing in Central Texas. We chose Belton over Stillhouse for this trip as Belton has offered more variety.
Indeed, over the course of this trip we caught fish via topwater, downrigging, vertical jigging, and on live shad with a special “sunfish demo” thrown in for good measure at trip’s end.
I was immediately impressed that Javier really loves his sons and that his sons love their dad. The way they spoke to one another, recalled good times shared in one another’s company, and were considerate of one another all pointed to a very tight knit family. That was good to see.
As the sun rose, partially obscured by some low clouds to the ENE, we encountered about 15 minutes of moderate topwater action by white bass and short hybrid striped bass. This action occured in the vicinity of Area 1019/133. The bait these fish were feeding on was small, so the gamefish did not make a big commotion on the surface trying to capture these forage fish. Due to the chop on the surface, the action was difficult to see from any distance away. Despite the presence of ~6 other boats nearby, we were able to fish for these schooling fish relatively undisturbed. By the time everything was over, we had boated 14 fish.
We remained in this area, searching with sonar to follow these fish back out to deeper water, and used slabs to target them when we encountered them. We had but one successful encounter at Area 1129. We saw these fish on sonar, got our slabs down to them and quickly boated an addtional 5 fish before these fish moved on and broke contact.
Things got a little tough at this point — we headed to Area 214/905 and worked the downriggers with mid-sized modified Pet Spoons fished tandem on the downriggers. We boated our first keeper hybrid, a crappie, and several white bass in this area before deciding to try elsewhere.
We headed to within the bounds of Area 369/382/788 and, upon arrival, spotted some mid-morning topwater action that actually stayed on top for more than a nano-second. We manuevered to within casting distance and fired away with Cork Rigs, boating another 6 white bass before the school sounded for good, however, these fish had shown their hand and we now knew they were in the vicinity. So, we used a search technique with twin downriggers deployed to try to locate the “spot on the spot” and added white bass to our tally steadily as we worked this area over. Several times, upon seeing heavy congregations of fish on the bottom, we stopped to vertically jig, but the fish did not respond well to that approach today. Observing this, I placed the boys all on one side using slabs and hung live baits on the other side. The live baits caught fish, but, for better or worse, these fish all had whiskers — blue cat and channel cat! Time to move…
We headed back to Area 214/905 and once again ran downriggers at around 28′. We immediately hooked and lost a keeper hybrid, then hooked and boated another. We thought we were on to something, but, our final 40 minutes worth of passes yielded only small white bass on the downriggers. We had now boated a total of 49 fish for our efforts and decided to head in.
Knowing that this family does not have a boat and that they live in Salado (and spend some time on the golf course there), I took some extra time to show them a “sure-fire” way to consistently catch sunfish wherever they swim (Belton, Stillhouse, golf course pond, Salado Creek, or anywhere else). We baited up a slipfloat rig with maggots and went to work on a nearby sunfish population. We landed 11 bluegill and blacktail shiners in no time flat, giving each of the boys a couple tries at the technique so they could replicate it on their own and then sent them on their way following this, their last “big event” before the start of the school year.
TALLY = 51 FISH, all caught and released.
TODAY’S CONDITIONS:
Start Time: 6:55a
End Time: 12:15p
Air Temp: 76F at trip’s start.
Water Surface Temp: 83.7F
Wind: SSE 5-8.
Skies: Skies were bluebird and clear.
This blog entry was authored by Bob Maindelle, owner of Holding the Line Guide Service, Belton Lake Fishing Guide and Stillhouse Hollow Fishing Guide .