Must be Living Right — 61 Fish, Belton Lake, 02 May 2014

This
morning I fished with father and son team Steve and Nick Stewart of Georgetown, Texas. 

Nick (L) and Steve (R) Stewart with our first 3 hybrid taken in the first 15 minutes on the water.


Steve
owns Deskmap, a geologic mapping company, and his son, Nick, works for
the Dept. of Defense.
Nick just returned to the U.S. from a stint in Afghanistan and was enjoying some downtime with his folks before heading back and reestablishing himself in the Washington, D.C. area.

I told Steve he must be living right — this 6 week “window” in which the threadfin shad spawn and the hybrid go on a rampage, typically sees repeat customers reserving dates a full year in advance.  By the first of April, the month of May is typically booked solid.  Well, not knowing or appreciating any of this, Steve just called me out of the blue on Wednesday looking for a trip today minutes after a cancellation call for this morning’s trip came in, so he just kind of waltzed into an ideal situation.

Shad netting went well this morning with over 260 shad caught in one throw (my first throw).  This set us up nicely to get on the fish just as the sun was rising.

Our first stop saw about an hour of solid action and our best catch of legal-sized hybrid of the day.  This action died as the WNW breeze died, and then picked right up again,albeit briefly, when the breeze resumed after a 25 minute lull.  As the fishing slacked off we decided to make a move after looking “locally” first in the same general vicinity we’d been fishing and finding little.

Our second stop yielded a very high proportion of “short” hybrid to keeper-sized fish, so, we enjoyed some very fast action for about 30-40 minutes, and then decided to leave these fish behind and roll the dice on finding some additional large fish in our final hour on the water.

As it turned out, the gamble paid off, as were we able to land 5 additional keeper hybrid at our final stop.

Today’s fish all came on large, lively threadfin shad fished vertically beneath the boat after first finding fish on sonar in 30-36 feet of water.

When all was said and done today, we’d boated exactly 61 fish, of which about 25-30% were legal, 18+ inch hybrid striped bass.

TALLY = 61 FISH, all caught and released


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TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:
Start Time: 7:00a
End Time: 11:30p
Air Temp: 49F at trip’s start.
Water Surface Temp: 68.8F 
Wind:  WNW13 at trip’s start, then varying from WNW 10-14
Skies: Cloudless fair sky
Other Notes: GT35

Areas Fished with success:

**1369 Netted shad here in the AM
**1380 caught 50% of our catch here
**976/152 caught 40% of our catch here
**150/098 caught 10% of our catch here








Bob Maindelle
Holding the Line Guide Service

254-368-7411

www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com
Salado, Texas