This morning I fished Belton Lake with Ryan S. of Temple, TX. Ryan has been out with me on numerous occasions and is a very good fisherman. We targeted hybrid striped bass today using live threadfin shad as bait.
Ryan holds one just-legal hybrid and a 4.5 pound hybrid caught just seconds apart. These were two of 29 “keeper” (18+ inch long) fish we took during the first two hours following sunrise today.
Ryan is an anesthesiologist by trade and is headed to the new Scott & White facility in Bryan/College Station soon. This was to be our last trip while he’s residing here, so, I wanted it to be a good one.
A strong, late season cold front blew through last Thursday leaving clear, cool, post-frontal conditions in its wake. Still this morning we had light northerly winds, a morning low temperature of 50F, and bright, clear skies until around 9:30am. I found no evidence of spawning shad this morning. Fortunately, I foresaw this situation developing and netted shad in advance of the trip at this time of year when hybrid are so keenly drawn to that bait.
We started off our day near Area 511 where what little wind was blowing was impacting the shoreline. That, plus the presence of some blue herons and some positive returns on sonar made me hopeful. We put 1 short hybrid and 3 white bass in the boat here, but nothing more promising developed, so we continued our search.
Our next stop came at Area 346/086 in about 36 feet of water. The fish we would catch here were not feeding as we idled over top of this area searching for them, but I could see them lying close to bottom on sonar, so, we stopped and made a go of it. We spent about 2 hours here and enjoyed non-stop action for the majority of that time. We fished with 4 downlines and had times when we could only keep 2-3 in the water. During our time at this location, we boated an additional 38 fish, of which 29 were legal sized hybrid striped bass going at least 18 inches. The remainder of our catch consisted of short hybrid, white bass, and a few blue catfish. When the light NW wind stopped blowing, the fishing quickly nosedived. One of the things contributing to our success was Ryan’s ability to quickly fight and land large fish. A quick fight is much less stressful on fish we intend to release, and, a quickly fought fish caught while other fish are biting lets us tend to other downed rods and capitalize on them. Further, a well-controlled fish does not tangle other lines, or get caught in the trolling motor, anchor line, or outboard, thus not costing us valuable time tending to distractions when the fish are in a peak feed. It’s all about making hay while the sun shines when hybrid go on a feed, and with Ryan’s ability to fight and control fish, we were able to maximize our fish catching and minimize distraction.
We left this area behind and continued looking, knowing that the tough weather conditions we now faced were going to make fishing tough no matter where we looked. We ran sonar over a few places and didn’t even see bait at a majority of them. We made a brief stop in the vicinity of Area 212, picked up 2 blue cat out of 45 feet of water and moved on suspecting there was nothing but blue cat there.
When we came upon Area 717, however, the story changed. We saw ample bait down as far as 45 feet and, as we slowed down and watch sonar closely, saw a tightly packed school of white bass on bottom here in about 41 feet of water. We agreed to “adjust fire” from our plans of pursuing hybrid only as we both knew enough about that species to know that the weather conditions staring us in face were among the toughest there are to fish for them. We broke out the sensitive graphite rods, braided line, and TNT180 slabs (3/4 oz. white) and went to work. All said, we boated another 42 fish here on the slabs including a mix of 39 keeper and short white bass, and one 14.5 pound smallmouth buffalo. The white bass responded to a mixture of vertical jigging, easing, slow smoking, and horizontal lift-dropping.
Around 11:15, a light breeze began again out of the WSW accompanied by high, thin grey cloud cover at ~80% coverage. I suggested we give the hybrid on last shot before the traditional mid-day slump kicked in. We searched a good bit of bottom, finally finding some activity at Area 489. We put the boat in a hover, got bait and chum working and, as they often do late in the morning, got some hybrid briefly jazzed. We pulled in two keeper hybrid, one short hybrid, and missed a third all in one flurry and then it was over. One of these three hybrid was our biggest fish of the day weighing in at 5.25 pounds and taping in at 22 7/8″. After that flurry, a few blue cat began to move in on our chum, we boated 2 in quick succession, and, around 12:15p, we decided to call it a day.
TALLY = 89 fish, all caught and released
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TODAY’S CONDITIONS:
Start Time: 6:35a
End Time: 12:15p
Air Temp: 50F at trip’s start.
Water Surface Temp: 66.5F
Wind: Winds were light and variable from the NNW0-4 until 11:15a when we saw a light and variable wind from WSW begin.
Skies: Skies were bluebird until 9:30, about the time our light, early morning breeze quit. Skies slowly clouded over to 80% high, thin grey clouds by 11:15a.
Bob Maindelle
Holding the Line Guide Service
254-368-7411
www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com
Salado, Texas