This morning I fished with retirees Lynn Niedermeier and Michael Vlies, both originally from Wisconsin. Both are occasional anglers who often cashed in on “destination fishing” in conjunction with business trips taken to watery locales during their working years.
Lynn, Michael, and I enjoyed some topwater action on white bass and short hybrid stripers in the first 2 hours of light this morning. Fishing was otherwise pretty tough given the clear skies, bright sun, and low wind speeds.
I always enjoy getting to know the folks who come out on my boat, and especially so when I find I have things in common with them. As it turns out, Michael was stationed at Ft. Hood in the 1970’s and recalled how Belton Lake looked back then. Also, Lynn and Michael’s daughter is a Naval Academy Graduate (referred to as a “squid” by we West Pointers) of the Class of 1994, so, we got to talk a bit about service academy life, too.
On the fishing front, we had a bit of a tough day today, with 20 fish boated for our efforts.
We began the day in pursuit of topwater feeding fish, and found some spotty action in the waves pushed by a 9-10 mph breeze pre-dawn. We landed 9 fish (white bass and short hybrid stripers) on Cork Rigs used on spinning gear. This action lasted from around 6:15a to 7:00, then, as the sun began to climb above the grey cloud bank in the east the action waned.
We tried down rigging right back over top of the fish that were just on the surface feeding, but caught only one as we backtracked that way.
We moved on to deep, open water and kept our eyes peeled for “off-shore” schools of white bass and hybrid striper, finding several. With the sun getting brighter and the winds calming, we typically only got one cast each at these fish before they sounded and disappeared.
After these open-water schools disappeared for good we began down rigging, adding several more short hybrid and white bass (and one blue catfish) to our tally. By now it was around 9 am and the surface was getting glassy. We pulled up shallow and caught some fresh bait, then hovered out in deepwater off a break line and targeted loosely schooled hybrid down around 22-34 feet. Although we had a number of fish come into our spread, we only got 3 strikes. Michael capitalized on one of this, landing our largest fish of the trip, a 16″ hybrid striper.
I extended the trip a bit, but by 10:45 I could tell we’d done all we were going to do. Unfortunately, this 4th of July weekend’s forecast looks like continued tough conditions with light, variable winds, little cloud cover, and bright, direct sun called for on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.
Despite these somewhat unfavorable conditions, the solar input and increasing temperatures should cause further development of the thermocline, eventually making bait fishing and down rigging a bit easier and more consistent by late July (which is much later than this normally occurs, thanks to a long winter and a cool, cloudy, damp June).
TALLY = 20 FISH
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TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:
Start Time: 6:15am
End Time: 10:45am
Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 75F
Water Surface Temp: 80.9F
Wind Speed & Direction: SSE-9, tapering off to S3-4
Sky Conditions: 20% cloudy
Other: N/A
AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:
**Area 814-080 topwater at sunrise
**Vicinity of Area 1084-678 openwater topwater action
** Vicinity of Area 1402-483 downrig
** Between Areas 180-1400 live bait for hybrid
Bob Maindelle
Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service
254.368.7411 (call or text)
Salado, TX
www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com
Bob@HoldingTheLineGuideService.com
