We Squashed ‘Em!! — 115 Fish, Belton, 10 Nov. 2014

This morning I fished with Jake Prishkulnik and Jeff Pollock, both businessmen from the Santa Fe, New Mexico area.  They signed up for a squash tournament in Dallas on Saturday and Sunday (in which they placed 1st & 2nd), and finished out their tour of Texas with a fishing trip on Belton.

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L to R: Jake Prishkulnik and Jeff Pollock teamed up to put together a catch of 115 fish today in the face of a stiff south wind generated by pre-frontal warming in advance of the season’s hardest cold front to date which hit around sunrise the following day.

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The pair landed largemouth, drum, hybrid, and white bass (shown here).  The white bass in Jake’s left hand (red jacket) taped 14 1/8 inches — very nice for Belton Lake.

I first got to know Jake (a.k.a. “Pinky”) through a connection with Casas por Cristo, a missionary organization in El Paso that focuses on providing adequate housing for the poor in Juarez, Mexico, and elsewhere.  We’ve built homes together on several occasions and talked about doing a fishing trip, so, the time was right today.  I’d never met Jeff before, but enjoyed his company, as well.

We had a stiff south wind today, starting at ~12mph pre-sunrise, and slowly working its way up to about 17-18 mph by the time we called it a day around 12:15p.

We caught fish the entire span of the trip, although the catch rate was moderate, allowing us to put 62 fish in the boat by around 11:30.  Then, once again, the fish put on the afterburners around 11:30, and from that time until ~12:15, we nearly doubled our catch, adding another 53 fish to our tally sitting on one boat-sized area, to bring our total catch today up to exactly 115 fish.

I did a bit of downrigging early in the vicinity of Area 1403/1223 hoping to see some early bird activity, but none materialized.  We picked up 5 white bass on the downriggers as we trolled – 2 doubles and a single on a a pair of tandem-rigged Pet Spoons.

After the sun brightened a bit, we headed out deep to search for schooled white bass and hybrid stripers.  We found fish as shallow as 32 feet and as deep as 46 feet, with most at the deeper end of that spectrum.

Nearly every one of our fish came via a smoking tactic using silver 3/4 oz. TNT180 slabs.  On a few occasions as Jake and Jeff used a smoking tactic, I’d experiment with vertical jigging, but that did not pan out well.  These fish are still in a chasing mood given the still-warm 66-67F water.

We boated a mix of short and keeper white bass and short and keeper hybrid, although the legal hybrid made up a small percentage of our catch (about 5 of the 115).  In our mix of fish we also picked up 2 largemoujth from out of 44 feet of water, and a single freshwater drum.

 

TALLY = 115 FISH, all caught and released

 

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 6:45a

End Time:  12:15p

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start:  49F

Water Surface Temp:  66-67F

Wind Speed & Direction:  S12 at sunrise, increasing to and leveling off at S17 by trip’s end

Sky Conditions: Cloudless, fair skies.

Other: GT=140

 

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area   1403/1223 downrigging early

**Area  187/1287 smoking

**Area 171/1290 smoking

**Area 1468/1463 smoking

**Area 1469 (most productive area and the last fished, smoking)

 

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

Salado, TX

www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

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