This morning I welcomed aboard Tony Bagliore, Scott Kearsing, and Greg Graham for a morning of hybrid striped bass fishing on Lake Belton.

(L to R) Greg Graham, Tony Bagliore, and Scott Kearsing with three fistfuls of hybrid striped bass taken in the opening 20 minutes of our excursion.

It was a pleasure to fish with this great bunch of fellows today.  They all serve the Lord together in ministry to lost and hurting people, and they all serve their customers together as co-workers at Bagliore Concrete.  You could tell right away that these guys all got along well and enjoyed being on the same team.

I provided a bit of “water taxi” service today by beginning our trip by picking this trio up at Tony’s houseboat located on Lake Belton.  We then went over the basics of safety and of handling the hybrid-specific gear I had prepared for this trip.  We then got down to business, covered down over top of a good school of aggressive hybrid, chummed them into action, watch sonar begin to light up, and proceeded to boat fish for 45 minutes straight coming right out of the chute this morning.

I’ve observed that the last 3 trips (Monday AM, Friday AM, and this morning) there has been a very strong bite in the first hour between about 7a-8a, and then things have settled down very quickly to a very moderate or even slow pace.

We are definitely approaching the end of “Shad Spawn 2014” with fewer and fewer spawners showing up in the shallows now despite ideal wind conditions and direction.  With this, the annual 6-8 week peak of hybrid fishing will also come to a close.  Today we once again saw an increase in the proportion of blue cat showing up in our catch, as well.

Tony recently bought a center-console with the intention of learning to fish Belton, so, I tried to point out as much useful information as I could as we progressed through the trip today, focusing on sonar use and on seasonal trends in the fishery.

When all was said and done we boated a total of 51 fish including ~22 legal hybrid.  The remainder of our catch consisted of mainly blue cat, with a few white bass a few “short hybrid”, and 1 smallmouth thrown in for good measure.

 

 

 

Start Time: 6:45a

End Time: 11:15a

 

This morning I welcomed Freddy Mize and his wife, Cindy, aboard for a trip targeting hybrid striped bass using live shad on Belton Lake.

Freddy Mize with a pair of nice “keeper” hybrid on his first ever guided fishing trip.

Freddy and Cindy are from the rural outskirts of Conroe, Texas, and were inspired to do some traveling outside of their locale by the TV show “The Daytripper”.  They rented a nice cottage near Arrowhead Point on Belton Lake, and planned to due a few things here in central Texas including visiting the Texas Ranger Museum, going to the suspension bridge over the Brazos River, eating at some locally popular restaurants, and fishing with me.

Although Freddy has fished since he was a kid, he’d never taken a professionally guided trip before.  By the time our half-day on the water was over, he caught more fish than he had ever caught before in a single outing — 37 to be exact.

Cindy was a spectator to all of this.  She’d been fishing before and kind of assumed you just sat … and waited … and got bored.  Not 12 minutes into our trip when 3 of our 4 rods were being pulled down by 3+ pound hybrid stripers she declared, “Well if I had known we were going to catch fish like this I would have gotten my license!”.   I am confident she’ll have her license when they return in November to fish with me once again!.

Today’s bite was best in the first hour, average in the middle two hours, and went cold in the final hour.  As the shad spawn tapers and the water warms, the hybrid begin to spread out and head shallow to get above the developing thermocline.  I have also noted over the past several years that the incidence of blue cat being caught on shad increases sharply as the hybrid bite begins to soften.

Cindy stayed seated on the rear bench seat of my center console.  From that position she could observe all four rods.  Once she got the hang of what a rod looked like as the shad began to get nervous just before a gamefish swallowed it she would warn us, “Get ready, Freddy!”.  Having Cindy on board was better than having reels equipped with bait clickers!

We had a good time today, although thanks to the stronger-than-expected pull of so many hybrid, Freddy said he was going to have to factor an unplanned nap into his schedule before heading out to lunch over at Sol de Jalisco on FM2271.

 

 

 

Start Time: 6:45a

End Time: 11:00a