TAUNTING! — 14 Fish, Belton Lake, 02 May 2015

This morning I fished on Belton Lake with Phil Duff and his 10-year-old grandson, Bishop.  Phil’s intent was for Bishop to do all the fishing as he just looked on.
 OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Bishop was treated to this morning’s hybrid striper trip on Belton by his Grams and Grandad Duff.

 Grams and Grandad Duff got Bishop a fishing trip gift certificate for Christmas and weather prevented us from redeeming that certificate over Spring Break, so, Bishop has been beyond patient in waiting for this postponement date to roll around.
One of the first things Bishop said following my safety talk and my introduction on how to use the gear was, “You have a lot of stuff on this boat that I’m not familiar with.”   So, I invited him to ask all the questions he cared to so he could learn a few things as we waited on the fish.
We got off to a slow first hour fishing a main lake breakline until a call from a fellow fisherman came in letting me know of some willing fish he had found and inviting us to join him.  Although the bite was certainly not white-hot, it was steady for about an hour from 8-9 am, allowing us to boat 10 fish and miss a few others.
After this short run was over, we headed back out in search of fish once again, finding a few off the Leon River channel, and boating an additional 3 hybrid stripers and 1 blue catfish.  The blue cats have both a distinctive way they bite and way they fight when hooked.  Often times, when fishing is slow, the blue cat will “pester” a live shad just enough to kill it, but not fully swallow it, thus avoiding being hooked.  When I observed that we had a blue cat messing around in our bait spread, I put on a dead chunk of bait to try to allow Bishop to catch it.  I suppose the fish was too small to take the chunk fully in its mouth, as we got a number of pulldowns, but still couldn’t hook the fish.  It was then that Bishop exclaimed, “He’s taunting me!”.  He then set his mind on catching that fish before we departed.  A few minutes later, after baiting up with a smaller chunk of bait, we finally caught that catfish fair and square right in the corner of his mouth.
Without prompting, as we wrapped up our trip, Bishop told his Grandad, “This was fun!”.   And with that, we headed back to the boat ramp.

 

 

TALLY = 14 FISH, all caught and released

 

CLICK TO RETURN TO FISHING GUIDE’S HOME PAGE

CLICK TO RETURN TO FISHING GUIDE’S FACEBOOK PAGE

 

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 7:00a

End Time:  11:30a

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start:  62F

Water Surface Temp:  72F on lower lake

Wind Speed & Direction: Light and variable until 9:00am, then a southerly breeze began, building to 11-12 mph, then dying back to 7-8mph

Sky Conditions:  Fair and 10% cloud cover

Other: GT=20

 

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 1288

**Area 1344

 

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

Salado, TX

www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com