This past Tuesday morning, April 12th, I welcomed aboard returning guest Carroll Hall and his wife, Nancy.  The Hall’s traveled in from southwest of Austin to fish with me this morning.

From left: Nancy and Carroll Hall paused just long enough in the middle of a hybrid striper feeding spree to snap this photo.  They then got right back on the shad-baited rods and kept bringing fish of this same caliber in the boat.

Although Carroll is quite an accomplished angler, especially in the realm of flyfishing (including Federation of Fly Fishers certification as a Master Certified Casting Instructor), it had been quite some time since Nancy had handled a rod, and she was not all that familiar with spinning gear.  So, I suggested we put the pursuit of hybrid off until later in our trip and pursue more numerous, but smaller, white bass casting blade baits horizontally up in shallow water.

 

This paid off handsomely.  With an entourage of about 50 laughing gulls to point the way to active fish, we were able to move along with the main body of white bass as they went on a feeding spree with grey skies overhead and choppy water all around.  I positioned the boat using the #Minnkota Ulterra upwind allowing us to cast downwind into the fish.  This served to lengthen our casts and keep the wind and drizzle to our backs.  The Halls managed 24 fish in right at an hour’s time using both the blade baits cast horizontally and slabs fished vertically.

 

As the feed began to wind down, we made our way into clearer, deeper water to seek out hybrid striped bass.

 

I looked for fish in areas impacted by the NNE wind which was blowing right at 12 mph.  In doing so, I found two distinct populations of fish holding about 150 yards apart atop the same N-S oriented breakline in about 40 feet of water.  The first area gave up numerous, but small, fish.  The second area was revealed to us by a small flock of 8-10 actively working laughing gulls and gave up the best quality fish we encountered all morning, including 12 legal hybrid striped bass.  All of these were taken on live shad.

 

As has been the case quite regularly this season, not long after we began catching good quality fish, smaller fish, attached by all the ruckus, moved in and began killing and stealing bait.  Our strike to land ratio dropped off substantially.  We actually wrapped up the trip by vertical jigging with slabs for the short hybrids and 1 and  2 year old white bass that were carpeting the bottom.  We finished up with exactly 68 fish for the effort we put in.

 

TALLY: 68 Fish, all caught and released

 

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 7:45a

End Time:  11:45a

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 64F

Water Surface Temp:  66.5F

Wind Speed & Direction:  Winds were ESE at 11-12 the entire trip with occasional drizzle.

Sky Conditions:  100% grey skies to the point of light rain for the entire trip.

Water Level: 594.69 and falling with 594.0 being full pool.  Water being released at 765 cubic feet per second.  Lake fell 0.05 feet in the past 24 hours

Other: GT= 45

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

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 1735/1736 casting to shallow whites with blades & easing with slabs

**Area vic 472 smaller fish on live bait

**Area vic 1608 legal hybrid stripers first evidenced by feeding birds, giving way to smaller and smaller fish as time went by.  Started with live bait and ended by easing with slabs.

 

 

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

This past Monday, April 11th, I met up with Bob Schwartz of Temple, his son, Will Schwartz of Austin, and local businessman, Jeff Jones (a friend of Bob’s), for a morning of fishing on Lake Belton.  This was Bob’s third trip with me, Will’s second, and Jeff’s first.

From left: Bob is a retired judge, Jeff runs an environmental services company in Temple and has a son who is a junior in high school, and Will works in logistics and has 3 young children. The trio put together a bag of 73 fish this morning.

 

As we got going, I led us in prayer to settle my mind a bit.  I hit some road debris on FM439 as I was headed out to get bait and wound up having to change my flat passenger-side front tire in the dark and rain on the shoulder of the road.  This threw my timing off for the morning and I felt a bit frazzled before 7am ever rolled around.

 

I then laid out all of the options to these fellows, including the option of some fast action for smaller fish on light spinning tackle up shallow, and/or the option of fishing bait for fewer but larger fish out deeper.

 

It was clear that Bob and Jeff wanted to learn about fishing as much as they desired to catch fish, so, we agreed that providing exposure to multiple tactics would be helpful and desirable.

 

Because of the very heavy, dark cloud cover (to the point of light rain), the low-light fishery that usually develops in advance of sunrise was pushed back a bit this morning.  In the interest of teaching, I explained about the process of finding and gathering bait, and we spent some time patrolling for spawning shad.

 

Afterwards, we set out for shallow water and I kept my eyes peeled for birds feeding on baitfish forced to the surface by the gamefish we desired to catch.  It didn’t take long to find action using my optics — about 30 laughing gulls were tearing it up in 13-19 feet of water on a flat.  We got to them, closed the distance with the trolling motor, and began fan casting blade baits for consistent hookups over a 75 minute span.

 

As it became clear that this shallow-water bite was about to wrap up (as evidenced by greatly reduced bird activity and a falling catch rate), we headed out to deeper water.

 

We fished two areas with live shad, pickup up keeper hybrid at the first area before the commotion involved in catching them drew smaller fish in forcing us to leave.  The second area produced only smallish fish.

 

In talking with other regular Belton anglers, this seems to be the trend this season.  I’m running at about a 15% proportion of keeper hybrid stripers (those 18 inches or greater) to the rest of the catch (short hybrid, white bass of all sizes, drum, blue catfish, largemouth and smallmouth.

 

We finished up this morning’s trip with exactly 73 fish boated after the first bite began around 8:15, thanks to that dark cloud cover moving the timing of the morning bite back a bit.

 

TALLY: 73 Fish, all caught and released

 

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 7:15a

End Time:  11:45a

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 68F

Water Surface Temp:  66.1F

Wind Speed & Direction:  Winds were ESE at 3-4 until 9:15.  Then skies cleared and the winds picked up to 11-13mph

Sky Conditions:  90-100% grey skies to the point of light rain until 9:15, then clearing to 40% clouds.

Water Level: 594.74 and falling with 594.0 being full pool.  Water being released at 765 cubic feet per second.  Lake fell 0.05 feet in the past 24 hours

Other: GT= 50

 

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 1735 casting to shallow whites with blades

**Area vic 098 keeper hybrid followed by small fish

**Area vic 953 lots of smaller fish, followed by bluecat that came into the chum

 

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