This evening I fished with Ben Lowry and his 16-year-old son, Dawson, of Belton on Belton Lake.
Ben Lowry and his son, Dawson, came out tonight for a “Belton Lake Tutorial” — more interested in what it takes to catch fish than in actually catching them. We covered a number of productive summertime tactics in our time on the water.
Ben is pain management doctor at Scott & White and Dawson is a high school student at Belton High School involved in football, baseball, and competitive cheer. Ben has been a boat owner for about a year and a half and has fished Belton Lake, but with limited success, and with most of that success coming via flatline trolling with crankbaits. Ben’s intent tonight was to get an exposure to the techniques required to become more proficient at fishing Belton. For that reason, we intentionally divided the trip up into live bait fishing, downrigging, vertical jigging, and topwater fishing.
Belton typically fishes much better in the mornings in the summer, and, although this trip was initially scheduled for the morning, Ben’s work demands required we move it to the afternoon. The afternoon bite tends to be shorter and less intense than the morning bite, and wind, high sun intensity, and heat can all play a negative role, as well. Regardless, we took lemons and made lemonade and got on a few fish with the various techniques we tried.
We spent most of our time and had most of our success on live bait. We made 5 stops and found fish at the first and the last of these stops. Most of the action and sonar returns were at between 24-32 feet, and a majority of the time we had our baits at 26-29 feet over deeper bottoms. We landed a number of keeper hybrid, short hybrid, and largemouth bass and then stopped live bait fishing in order to have enough time to do some downrigging and then look for some sunset white bass.
Since Ben does not have downriggers on his boat, I didn’t spend much time on this technique, but walked both he and Dawson through the entire setup process. We trolled a very short distance, picked up one short hybrid and one white bass, one of which pulled the fishing line out of the release clip, with the other requiring a manual trip. So, this was a well-rounded, successful exposure to that technique in a short span of time.
We were now within 20 minutes of sunset, and it was clear that the winds were not going to subside sufficiently to allow for spotting topwater action. So, we ran to some more wind-protected areas looking for white bass and hybrid churning the surface, but found none. I still explained the setup of the topwater “Cork Rig” that I favor for such scenarios and, once we spotted some bottom-hugging white bass where we’d hoped to find some topwater, I demonstrated the “easing” technique used with slab spoons for such scenarios.
We ended the trip using a pole to catch small sunfish as I demonstrated how to capture these as a hot-weather alternative to shad. Fortunately, despite the late hour, two green sunfish cooperated so the demonstration could be completed. By now it was dark, so we cranked up and headed back in with 8 fish caught on bait and 2 on the downriggers — pretty slow as compared to the past several morning trips with catches of 72 fish yesterday, 47 fish on Monday, and 36 fish on Saturday. But, that, in an of itself is a lesson about timing and the distinctions between AM and PM fishing on Belton.
TALLY = 10 FISH
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TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:
Start Time: 4:55pm
End Time: 9:30 pm
Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 94F
Water Surface Temp: 83.6F
Wind Speed & Direction: SSE13-15
Sky Conditions: 10% clouds on a fair sky
Other: GT=30
AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:
**Area 1408/833 – bait for 1 legal hybrid, 1 short hybrid, 1 largemouth
**Area 151/152- bait for 2 legal hybrid, 1 short hybrid
**Area 084 – downrig for 1 short hybrid, 1 white bass
Bob Maindelle
Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service
254.368.7411 (call or text)
Salado, TX
www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com
Bob@HoldingTheLineGuideService.com