Eastside Baptist Men Go Fishing — 122 Fish, Belton, 08 April

This morning, April 8, I fished with Gary Moore, Kirk Bateman, and Israel Lozada . All three men serve on the deacon body of their church, Eastside Baptist Church, in Copperas Cove, TX. Gary and Kirk have fished with me previously, and Israel has been experimenting with bank fishing at Belton and Stillhouse recently.

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From left: Kirk Bateman, Gary Moore, and Israel Lozada — all deacons at Eastside Baptist Church in Copperas Cove, TX.

The morning got off to a bit of a slow start, thanks to bright sun and calm winds. We were able to put some short hybrid and white bass in the boat using live shad while sitting off of a point in about 32 feet of water after seeing these fish congregated on sonar. As that bite was just about winding down, I spotted some very widespread bird activity. About 30 laughing gulls were working over an area about 8 acres in size, and sonar revealed that wolf packs of white bass were patrolling actively throughout this area and feeding on shad.
I suggested that while the winds were fairly calm we take what we could get and fish with slabs for the white bass until wind developed thus upping our chances of getting into larger hybrid stripers using live bait.  Eventually, an easterly wind developed at about 12 mph.
We left the white bass action with fish still biting and headed to deeper, open water to search with sonar for hybrid striper.  I searched four areas. The first area held nothing, the second area gave up a nice mix of short and keeper white bass, and short and keeper hybrid stripers. When that area died down, we moved up into a deep cove, and found abundant, but small white bass and hybrid striper.
We left that area behind after putting about 15 fish in the boat, and moved on to what would be our last area to fish, and the one that gave up the best proportion of keeper hybrid of all the spots we fished.  This area sat on a breakline in 34 feet of water. The fish were so active and aggressive that they actually came up off the bottom while responding to the boat noise we made while positioning over top of them, and our baits immediately got hit as we set them first at 29 feet, and then up a bit higher at 26 feet once the frenzy really got underway. We wound up with exactly 22 fish here, seven of which were keeper hybrid stripers.Gary, who coordinated the trip, was the one who made the call when I gave my anglers the choice of sticking with a sure bet of small fish at our second to last area, or rolling the dice and leaving those fish behind and looking for larger hybrid striper. The rule of thumb is not to leave fish to find fish, but since these fellows were willing to trade quantity for quality, I was very willing to accommodate.  We wrapped up our day with 122 fish consisting entirely of white bass and hybrid striper, with a single freshwater drum thrown in for good measure.

 

TALLY = 122 FISH, all caught and released

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 7:30a

End Time: 12:00p

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 60F

Water Surface Temp:  65.5F

Wind Speed & Direction:  Light SSE breeze at under 3mph, ramping up to E12 by 9am

Sky Conditions:  20% cloud cover on a fair sky.

Water Level: 594.87 and falling with 594.0 being full pool.  Water being released at 766 cubic feet per second.  Lake fell 0.06feet in the past 24 hours

Other: GT= P

 

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area vic 1728 white bass and short hybrid on bait at sunrise
**Area vic 1732, 1733, and 752-738 white bass on slabs under feeding laughing gulls
**Area 346 – keeper hybrid, short hybrid, whites of all sizes on bait
**Area 1079 – lots of small fish
**Area 953 – most productive area for keeper hybrid on shad
 

 

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

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