This past Thursday morning, March 31st, I fished with George Preston and his son-in-law, Jason Garcia, both from California, near San Diego.  George’s daughter and his other son-in-law had their first child this week, and so George and Jason came to town for a visit to celebrate the event.

This morning’s trip offered up both quality and quantity hybrid fishing for Jason Garcia (shown) and his father-in-law, George Preston — a mixed bag of 59 fish.

At one point this morning, for a span of about 25 minutes, we could only keep one rod per man in the water baited and down as the fish came up off bottom to meet our baits and fed aggressively.  Here Jason (left) and George show a few of the just-keeper hybrid we took during that spree.

If you follow this Facebook page and/or my blog, you’ll know I keep meticulous records of every single one of my fishing trips, and I have done so for Belton and Stillhouse since 1992, even before I began my guide service.  Today was a perfect example of how that record-keeping paid off.  I have not fished a single guided trip on Belton since New Year’s Eve thanks to the excellent quality and quantity of white bass that Stillhouse gave up (and is still giving up) this winter and early spring.  That said, my logbooks pointed to this last week of March/first week of April being the start of what I define as a 7-8 week peak season for Belton hybrid striped bass.

This peak corresponds with the spawning of the threadfin shad.  During this timeframe I consistently catch more and larger hybrid than during the balance of the year, and invest a lot less effort in doing so both in terms of gathering bait and searching for fish.

The best fishing will take place during the morning from now until mid-May.  At this time, I have only 8 such slots left open.  They are as follows.  Please give me a call ASAP if you’ve been thinking about doing this:

A review of my records earlier this week showed trends on where I should expect to find bait and fish, and these records were spot-on.  The bait showed up where and when I expected and I found fish where and when I expected.  This allowed me to keep my clients on fish for the majority of their 4 hours on the water with me.

George and Jason had never fished with live bait in the manner we did today and commented a number of times about how productive the tightlining technique was when enhanced with sonar and #i-Pilot positioning technology.

We fished at 4 locations and searched 2 others.  3 of these 6 areas held ample numbers of fish.  At each location we experienced mixed bag angling which yielded short and legal hybrid stripers, white bass, smallmouth bass, largemouth bass, blue catfish, and freshwater drum.  When all was said and done, we had boated 59 fish.

I expect this Friday’s cold front and the cold mornings (lows in the 40’s) forecast for Saturday and Sunday will temper things a bit, but with the returning south winds on Monday, things ought to fire back up again.

TALLY = 59 FISH, all caught and released

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 7:45a

End Time:  12:00p

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 65F

Water Surface Temp:  65.5

Wind Speed & Direction:  WNW11-12 the entire trip

Sky Conditions:  50% clouds decreasing to 30% white cloud cover on a fair sky.

Water Level: 594.75 and falling with 594.0 being full pool.  Water being released at 1560 cubic feet per second.  Lake fell 0.13 feet in the past 24 hours

Other: GT= 40

Wx SNAPSHOT (a graphical look at the forecast that faced us today):

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

Website: www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

E-mail: Bob@HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/bobmaindelle