This evening I headed out on Belton Lake with Dan S. of Washington state hoping for some topwater action now that the weather has straightened out following our recent cold front.
Dan is a combat engineer serving in his first enlistment in the U.S. Army at Ft. Hood. The year ahead will be an eventful one for him — he’s set to marry next month and will deploy to Afghanistan shortly thereafter.
As a gift, his parents got him a fishing gift certificate earlier in the summer and, with his training schedule being as it has, he only now has had the opportunity to redeem it.
We were ready to go last Thursday when the cold front arrived earlier than either me or the weatherman anticipated and so we postponed until the return of a favorable wind so that we could hedge our bet on experiencing some topwater action — something Dan has never seen in his fishing experience on the Yakima River back home.
As we got going we searched over Area 651 with sonar and, at around 37 feet, found a massive school of small blue catfish going 12-16″. By massive, I mean there were literally several hundred fish packed into a very small area. We downrigged (yes, intentionally used a moving, artificial lure very successfully for a catfish species) for 5 catfish and a small white bass and intended to stay longer, but a nice cloud bank to the SW brought an early dimming of the sun’s direct rays and so we headed elsewhere thinking we could find some better sized white bass and perhaps some hybrid in so doing.
We headed over to Area 1129 and, after a bit of searching to the E and W of here, found fish right on top of this area in 24-27 feet of water. Funny thing, although we picked off one fish after another with a horizontal presentation using the downriggers and although we were able to stop the boat and set up atop several dense schools of fish, these fish nearly flat refused to take a presentation with a vertical component to it. We cast bladebaits and slabs and worked them vertically and diagonally to no avail. Every time (and this repeated 4-5 times in a 40 minute span) we went back to downrigging and ran those baits perfectly horizontally, the fish responded and we hooked up. Weird, huh!?!
We quickly put 9 more fish in the boat before sunset, then, at and after sunset the fish made a movement shallow and we were able to follow them and only then began to take fish on the cast once they were in less than 12 feet of water. Eventually, near dark (well after sunset) the fish actually began to break the surface and feed on topwater, but it was light and short-lived, but, enough for Dan who had never seen such a thing to witness it and pull a few fish from off the top on the Cork Rig I designed just for this kind of fishing.
We wrapped up our trip around 8:30 with 32 fish boated including 5 blue cat, 2 short hybrid, 25 white bass, and at least 2 more hybrid that pulled off right at boatside.
Sorry I don’t have photos — we decided to catch fish instead of take pictures of them, and by the time it was all over with, it was too dark for a quality photo.
TALLY = 32 FISH, all caught and released.
TODAY’S CONDITIONS:
Start Time: 5:30p
End Time: 8:35p
Air Temp: 77F at trip’s start.
Water Surface Temp: 78.6F
Wind: WNW5-6.
Skies: Skies were 80% cloudy.
This blog entry was authored by Bob Maindelle, owner of Holding the Line Guide Service, Belton Lake Fishing Guide and Stillhouse Hollow Fishing Guide.