This Labor Day Monday I conducted the season’s 15th SKIFF (Soldiers’ Kids Involved in Fishing Fun) trip treating Eric and Roxy Flores to a very productive morning on Belton Lake.

Eric and Roxy Flores boated 112 fish today using a variety of tactics:  topwater, vertical jigging, downrigging, and slipfloat fishing.

 

Roxy landed our largest fish of the trip with this 3.75 pound blue catfish that struck our downrigged bait in 22 feet of water.

Eric and Roxy’s step-mother, U.S. Army Sergeant Marri Flores, is currently stationed in South Korea where she works in a military transportation unit.  Eric and Roxy’s step-father, Donnie Snider, a U.S. Army veteran, was able to accompany the kids as a non-fishing spectator on our trip.

The skies were cloudless this morning and so there was plenty of “seeing light” before sunrise.  Once the light reached that “magic” level, the fish turned on and began to feed on the surface for nearly 90 minutes.  The intensity of the feed rose and fell, but never stopped during this hour-and-a-half run.  During this time we used “Cork Rigs” equipped with hand-tied flies of my own design to imitate the very small baitfish these white bass and hybrid striped bass were feeding on.  Although the majority of the bait this morning consisted of small threadfin shad, there was also a low percentage of American silversides mixed in.  The flies we were using did a great job of imitating both, and nearly every well-placed cast was answered with a strike.  By the time the feed concluded, the kids had boated 43 fish.  This isn’t bad given that neither had used a spinning outfit before arriving at the courtesy dock this morning.

At one point, as the sun rose and shone directly on the nearly calm water, the action just about died.  During this time, because I was still seeing fish on sonar showing near the surface, we simply flatline-trolled the umbrella rigs I had intended to downrig with.  This continued to produce fish for us until a southerly breeze kicked in, rippled the surface, and re-energized the topwater action.

Once the topwater action died for good, we managed a few more fish by using slabs fished vertically along an anomaly in the bottom in the same general area where we’d experienced the topwater action.  This, too, died fairly quickly after giving up just 5 more fish.  Our tally now stood at 48 fish.

So as to introduce the kids to “pole fishing” with a bream pole, we spent a few minutes up in the shallows fishing for sunfish and blacktails.  I always like to show folks who are otherwise limited to fishing from shore this technique as it can be used in any body of water where sunfish exist.  The fact that Eric and Roxy seemed excited to get their little brother and little sister in on some fishing just gave me that much more reason to demonstrate this tactic.  We wound up catching 14 fish on the poles, including bluegill sunfish, green sunfish, and blacktails.

By now, it was just after 9:00am, and, over the past several weeks, I’ve been experiencing a solid 9:30a to 10:45a bite by sub-surface white bass.   So, as we approached that time, we got “on station” and began patrolling the area where this has been occurring with our dowriggers in the water.  The hope was to find the fish with downriggers and then really work over any population of fish we located by using slabs fished vertically.  Well, this worked like a charm.  We got into a large, aggressive school of white bass numbering in the hundreds and caught fish from out of this population for a solid 45 minutes.  We added exactly 50 more white bass to our tally, with (too) many missed fish that dropped off right at boatside or just after they were hooked.  The Redneck Fish’n’ Jigs Model 180 did the trick on these fish.

By 10:30 the fish had given up for the morning, the breeze was slowing and the sun was warming it up as a wave of recreational boaters began to arrive at the lake.  It was then that we agreed we’d done well and that it was time to head on in.

SKIFF (Soldiers’ Kids Involved in Fishing Fun) trips are provided free of charge to families whose children are separated from a parent due to that parent’s military service, thanks to the Austin Fly Fishers and a network of supportive individuals, organizations, and companies from all over the U.S. All it takes is a phone call from a parent to me at 254-368-7411 to reserve a date. SKIFF is open to children in elementary and middle school, as well as teens in high school.
TALLY = 112 FISH, all caught and released

 

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 6:35a

End Time: 10:40a

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 81F

Water Surface Temp: 84.0F

Wind Speed & Direction: S3-5

Sky Conditions: No clouds, fair sky.

Note: Lake has dropped 0.03 feet in the last 24 hours and now stands at 593.82 above sea level, with 594.00 being full pool

Other: GT= 0

 

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 1104/1591/188 topwater action for ~90 minutes

**Area 1591 on shore panfishing

**Area 687 downrigging leading to slabbing for heavily schooled deep white bass

 

 

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

Salado, TX

www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

This morning I fished with John Duggan, his wife, Kristie Taylor, and Kristie’s mom, Sharon Taylor.

Sharon Taylor of Bernardo, TX, landed our first and largest fish of the day.

From left: Sharon Taylor, John Duggan, and Kristie Taylor.  White bass made up the majority of our catch this morning.  They appeared briefly on topwater after sunrise, and then fed again in the upper part of the water column for about 75 minutes beginning around 9:30am.

John works as an orthopedic surgeon with the Seton network of hospitals, and Kristie works for an Austin-based public relations firm.  The two split time between a condo in Austin and a condo in Morgan’s Point, just depending on John’s “on call” schedule.  Sharon traveled in from a small town west of Houston for this weekend’s reunion.

John phoned me about a month ago desiring to put together a family fishing trip over this Labor Day weekend.  His family has made a tradition of reuniting and fishing over the Labor Day weekend for several years now, although they’ve typically met at on the Texas coast somewhere to do so.  Although the gatherings have been great, the fishing had been disappointing, so, John decided to “stay local”, invite the family to Belton and fish freshwater instead.  A fellow guide and I split their party of 6 across two boats and headed out in pursuit of white bass and hybrid striped bass.

We experienced a slow low-light bite prior to sunrise downrigging along bottom and adjusting the downrigging weights as appropriate to present our baits at whatever depth fish appeared at on sonar.  We boated 1 hybrid striped bass and 5 white bass through 7:30am.  Around this time, my partner called and said they’d found some fish on topwater and invited us to join in.

As we idled in, I could see the fish were well-dispersed and smallish, and that the bait they were chasing was very small.  Instead of trying to get 3 relatively inexperienced casters on what I knew would be very temperamental fish, I decided to stick with the downrigging approach to present smaller baits down in a bit deeper, darker water to help mask the lures’ size with motion and a lack of light.  This panned out pretty well as we boated another 13 fish before the bite died altogether.

We experienced the very predictable 8:30 to 9:30am lull, and then encountered aggressive schools of white bass working in the upper third of the water column (but not quite to the surface) as they’ve made a habit of doing for nearly 3 weeks now.  On some days such fish will congregate tightly and can be worked over from a hovering position using slabs fished vertically, and on other days they seem to stay on the move more, thus requiring a downrigging approach to keep up with them.  Today they were on the move, and so that meant we were, too.

Over the span of our last 75 minutes on the water, we boated 36 fish, including numerous doubles and triples on our 3-armed umbrella rigs, all from a moving boat.

There was definitely above-average boat pressure today due to the long weekend, however, when the fish failed to show in big numbers on topwater (thanks, in part to that pressure and to a stiff SSE breeze), many folks just gave up and left, leaving us free to fish without much company for the remainder of the morning — the time during which we caught the majority of our fish.

 

TALLY = 55 FISH, all caught and released

 

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 6:30a

End Time:  11:00a

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 79F

Water Surface Temp:  84.6F

Wind Speed & Direction: SSE9-12

Sky Conditions:  More humid today, with ~60% cloud coverage varying from white to grey.

Note: Lake has dropped 0.03 feet in the last 24 hours and now stands at 593.88 above sea level, with 594.00 being full pool

Other: GT= 30

 

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 1105 through 1236

**Area 1081 through 1579 downrigging to find fish; smoking slabs to catch them

 

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

Salado, TX

www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

This morning I fished with Mr. Gabe Carreras and his 7-year-old son, Christian, of Round Rock, TX, and Gabe’s father-in-law, Chris, from Birmingham, AL.

From left: Chris, Gabe, and Christian, all with hybrid ranging from 18-20″ taken both on top and with slabs worked through actively feeding fish found throughout the water column in ~30-35 feet of water..

With the weather holding very steady since our last cold front 2 Thursdays ago, and the moon now waning toward new moon once again, the good fishing has gotten even better.

We started the day on fish feeding on topwater chasing larger bait today, thus making them a bit easier to fool.  We found a mix of white bass and hybrid stripers joining the fray and took them on both cork rigs and slabs.  Of course the slabs had to be retrieved quickly to keep them up high in the water column were the fish were.

Once the topwater action began to subside, we used downriggers to encounter fish, then stopped over top of the fish we’d found to fish for them more thoroughly.  Since it was still early and the sun not yet too intense, we found these fish spread through the water column (versus down near bottom as happens later in the morning) and were able to use larger 3/4 oz. slabs to fool additional white bass and hybrid stripers.  We’d boated 28 fish up to this point

As the sun climbed higher and the winds subsided, the white bass and hybrid action died.  To keep young Christian engaged, we headed up shallow and I demonstrated the use of a bream pole for targeting sunfish and other, smaller, shallow-water species.  We hit two areas for a few minutes each and added 13 fish to our tally, including bluegill sunfish, longear sunfish, blacktail shiners, and a juvenile largemouth bass.

We closed out the trip today once again using the downriggers to locate fish, then slabs to exploit what we’d found.  As we searched with the ‘riggers, Christian managed to pull in a “triple”, catching 3 white bass on the 3 baits of his umbrella rig all at the same time.  We also landed a few doubles in this manner before finding a school of white bass sizeable enough to stop and use slabs over.  We wound up finding two distinct schools of white bass, mixed with short hybrid, and landed a total of 39 fish from these two schools before calling it a day with exactly 80 fish brought over the gunwales today.

TALLY = 80 FISH, all caught and released

 

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 6:30a

End Time:  11:00a

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 73F

Water Surface Temp:  83.2F

Wind Speed & Direction: SSE3-6

Sky Conditions:  Thin, grey, low cloud cover to the east before and at sunrise, clearing to 20% clouds on a fair sky.

Note: Lake has dropped 0.03 feet in the last 24 hours and now stands at 593.93 above sea level, with 594.00 being full pool

Other: GT= 30

 

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 1271/302 topwater at first light

**Area 1129/834 topwater leading to smoking

**Area 1583 & 492 panfish

**Area 1580 & 1589/1081 downrigging to find fish; smoking slabs to catch them

 

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

Salado, TX

www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

This Tuesday morning I fished with Mr. Carroll Hall of south Austin, TX.

Carroll boated this beautifully colored green sunfish from out of just 2′ of water where rock, wood and weeds all came together in a protected cove.  Check out the turquoise lines under the eyes and the bright orange trim around the tail.

Carroll got “hooked” on flyfishing soon after retiring and after giving thought as to how to best fish the Hill Country rivers that surrounded him.  One springtime trip to the Llano River for white bass after accumulating just enough gear to be dangerous, and the deal was done.  Like many things in the universe of angling, the genre of flyfishing has many sub-categories.  Carroll has really taken to, and excelled in, the arena of flycasting.  He’s actually become certified by the International Federation of Fly Fishers (IFFF) as a Certified Casting Instructor.  I can attest personally, after spending one coaching session with him, that he is a very good coach in that he knows his subject AND, more importantly, can tactfully and clearly communicate what the student must do to improve.  Beware: He does assign homework!!

Because there has been such consistent topwater action in quite a number of locations on Belton since about a week before our last new moon, I invited Carroll out today hoping that “streak” would continue, thus allowing him to land some fish on the fly.  He and I fished with live bait for hybrid striped bass on Belton Lake back in the spring, and he let me know he wanted to be made aware of any opportunities for catching fish on the fly as the season progressed.

We met at 6:30am and Carroll was fast to his first fish by 6:55am.  The fish did indeed show up, but, the feed was shorter and weaker than average, and the fish we encountered were on the small side, but, the challenge was to catch fish on the fly in slack water, and we did just that.  By the time the ~46 minute long feed ended, Carroll had boated a combination of 5 white bass and hybrid striper with a few more having pulled loose.  Carroll’s arsenal consisted of a 5 weight rod with full-floating line, a leader tapering to ~6 pound test, and a fly of my own design intended to imitate the small forage we’ve been encountering.

When the surface action died, it died hard.  As it died, a stiffer SSE breeze developed and made any further action that might have developed very difficult to spot.  At this point we transitioned to an even lighter 4 weight flyrod with full floating line and used a series of nymph patterns to target sunfish in wind-protected shallow cover.  In about 75 minutes of fishing, Carroll hooked and landed 9 green sunfish and 1 bluegill.  A gold-ribbed Hare’s Ear Nymph worked best.

We closed the trip out today spending our last 90 minutes in pursuit of deep, schooled white bass using “gear” instead of flyrod and reel.  I was able to locate two distinct schools of white bass in about 22 feet of water and get them excited enough to begin chasing the lead slabs we offered.   As the first school cooled off, I downrigged to locate the second school, thus giving Carroll some hands-on experience with the downrigging equipment.  Carroll’s son, daughter-in-law, and 2 grandchildren live near Puget Sound, and he’s often observed salmon anglers using these devices but never knew exactly how they were rigged.  We managed to boat several white bass during this “show and tell”, including a double (two fish on the same umbrella rig landed at the same time).  Between the slabbing and the downrigging, we put a final 27 fish in the boat and called it a day around noon.

TALLY = 42 FISH, all caught and released

 

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 6:30a

End Time:  12:00 noon

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 74F

Water Surface Temp:  84.3F

Wind Speed & Direction: SSE8-9

Sky Conditions:  Thin, grey, low cloud cover to the east before and at sunrise, clearing to 10% clouds on a fair sky.

Note: Lake has dropped 0.04 feet in the last 24 hours and now stands at 593.96 above sea level, with 594.00 being full pool

Other: GT= 80

 

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 1585 topwater at first light

**Area 1583 panfishing

**Area 1081 downrigging to find fish; smoking slabs to catch them

 

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

Salado, TX

www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com