Belton’s Finest Aboard! — 64 Fish, Belton Lake Hybrid Fishing

This past Tuesday morning, April 26th,  I was joined by City of Belton Police Chief Gene Ellis and the Belton City Manager, Sam Listi.  The two obviously have a good working relationship that carries over into off-duty hours, as well.
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Gene has joined me on several previous occasions, and this was Sam’s first time aboard with my Holding the Line Guide Service.
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I chided Sam a bit as it seems he has a brother-in-law who guides professionally on both Cedar Creek Reservoir and Richland-Chambers, yet Sam has not availed himself of any”family discount” and fished with the fellow thus far.
The USACE began releasing water overnight after retaining it ever since the heavy rains fell ~8 days ago.  The fish bit well today, but their locations definitely shifted.  Several of the areas that have been producing scores of fish for over the past several weeks simply held no fish this morning.
Once we found the fish around 8:15a, it was game-on for over 2.5 hour of continuous action on live shad.  At times, though we tried to fish 2 rods per man, we could only get 2 rods in the water grand total.  No sooner would be bait up, get the bait to depth and get the rod rested in a rod holder than the bait clicker would go off alerting us to the presence of another quality fish.
By around 10:30, the winds had blown hard enough and long enough for swells to develop. Fishing with bait in swells is typically an unproductive bet as the baits get yanked very unnaturally up and down, thus wearing down the baits, as well.  We moved to more protected water and continued to catch fish, although not of the quality that we’d experienced during that first long bite of the morning.
When all was said and done, we’d caught and released 64 fish.

TALLY: 64 Fish, all caught and released

 

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 7:15a

End Time:  11:15a

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 74F

Water Surface Temp:  70.1F

Wind Speed & Direction:  Winds steadily increased and shifted from at SSE13 to SSW19 with occasional higher gusts.

Sky Conditions:  60% cloud cover

Water Level: Belton finally leveled off at nearly 10 feet above full pool.  The USACE is now letting water out at 5,000-6,000 cfs and we had a net drop of 0.01 feet in the last 24 hours. 

Other: GT= 25


AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 187/1288 — 2.75 hours of continuous action in ~47 feet of water catching all sizes of hybrid striper and white bass with ~40% of the catch being legal hybrid.  We departed this area with 48 fish boated.

**Area vic 1137 — jigged with slabs for smaller fish and then baited up for larger fish with live shad and fished until the action ground to a halt right at 11:20a.

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