This morning I greeted Micky Boettger, his wife, Aly, and their 8-year-old daughter, Hope, at the courtesy dock on Belton Lake at 6:45am for a little family fun sprinkled with a bit of downrigger education for Micky.
Hope was brimming with excitement this morning. She about ran from the car down to the courtesy dock, greeted me enthusiastically, and let me know she was ready to catch fish — and she was!!!
From left: Micky, Hope, and Aly. Today was a multi-species kind of day; we caught white bass, hybrid stripers, green sunfish, a drum, a smallmouth bass, and a channel cat. Everything was eating small, young-of-the-year shad.
Micky fishes Belton Lake frequently with both rod and reel and with fixed juglines. He recently added a downrigger to his arsenal and, over the course of today’s trip, wanted to pick up on some of the fine points of how, when, and where to use this tool. We had spoken some time ago about this, and about timing such a trip when the sunfish were still up shallow to keep things interesting for Hope. Well, today was the day.
As we launched, I was a bit concerned about the little bit of nip in the air from the NW wind that came in as a mild cold front overnight. This can either really enhance a bite or really dampen it this early in the season when the barometric pressure changes (increases) but the water temperature remains unchanged. Fortunately, we still enjoyed a short topwater bite right before sunrise, allowing Hope to land 9 fish up shallow on a Cork Rig, however, that action died hard as the first direct rays of light, unfiltered by any manner of clouds, struck the water.
I looked quickly in 4 other areas that have been producing a topwater bite lately, but, they, too, were shut down. So, we shifted out deeper and began to probe with sonar for both bait and schools of gamefish.
We encountered exactly what I was hoping to find in the vicinity of Area 1604. Very large schools of shad were bunched together into tight balls here, indicating a threat by gamefish. We got downriggers down and, in 4 passes came up with 12 fish. Fish very aggressively came up off bottom to inspect the downrigger balls, indicating a willingness to feed. We quickly transitioned from downrigging to vertical jigging and caught fish continuously for about 35 minutes just hovering atop these fish that we’d found with the downriggers.
Once this bite died, we “mopped up” a few stragglers with a few more downrigger passes until that no longer was of interest to the fish, at which time we went shallow to introduce Hope to panfishing and Micky to a great way to catch some sunfish for catfish bait. We used a pole and slipfloat setup to catch green sunfish until the novelty of that method wore out on Hope.
We closed out our trip looking over 3 different chunks of water for more downriggable fish, but found none. By 11:15 it appeared the morning bite was over, and we called it a morning with 48 fish landed for our efforts.
TALLY = 48 FISH, all caught and released
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TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:
Start Time: 6:45a
End Time: 11:15a
Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 67F
Water Surface Temp: 82.3F
Wind Speed & Direction: NW9 at sunrise, tapering to NW5-6
Sky Conditions: Cloudless
Other: GT= 0
AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:
**Area 478 low-light topwater action
**Area 1604 downrigging leading to smoking with slabs
**Area 1583 panfishing
Bob Maindelle
Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service
254.368.7411 (call or text)
Salado, TX
www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com