A Little Father-and-Son Time — 30 Fish, Belton, 11 June

This past Saturday, June 11, I fished with Tony Grepares and his 10-year-old son, Adony. Tony decided to take some downtime from the digital printing business he owns to spend some father-and-son time with Adony now that he has completed his 5th grade year.

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From left: Tony Grepares and his ten-year-old son, Adony, with one of over 20 hybrid stripers we caught near midday on live shad in just over 30 feet of water after a very slow morning.

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Adony Grepares with an early morning hybrid striper taken on shad after he got the hang of using circle hooks down.  This was the very first hybrid Adony had ever caught.

The pair drove in from the west Houston area yesterday, took in Jacob’s Well near Wimberly together, then headed north to stay for the night in Temple before meeting me for a morning of fishing on Lake Belton.

We had planned to meet at 6:30, but did not get going until closer to 6:50. I arrived at the boat ramp area very early due to the limited access situation at Belton Park, and upon hearing from Tony that they were running behind, decided to use this little bit of downtime to search for top water action. Long story short, I saw no fishable top water action all morning this morning.

We really struggled most of the morning, giving live shad a thorough try in our first three hours on the water, then picking up with the downriggers between 10:45 and 11:45a.

While using shad, we got on one bunch of fish in about 30 feet of water early in the morning, caught only four fish and missed at least as many as the fellows got used to using circle hooks. When that area played out, we went looking elsewhere, only to return to within 50 yards of the same area to pick up a fifth and sixth fish.

Not only was finding fishable quantities of fish difficult, the bite was really soft when we did find fish.

Between 10:45 and 11:45a, we continued to pick at fish, this time with downriggers adding two white bass to our tally. Then, around noon, with the wind reaching its highest velocity for the morning, and the skies clearing to the greatest extent so far in the day, we found a nice concentration of 18-20 inch hybrid stripers in about 32 feet of water stacked up to 25 feet. We put 22 of these fish in the boat in the next 75 minutes, thus ending a pretty tough, slow morning with quite a memorable finish.

We wrapped up the day with exactly 30 fish boated, including the first white bass that Adony had ever caught, and the first hybrid that either father or son had ever caught.

 

 

TALLY = 30 fish, all caught and released

 

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 6:50a

End Time:  1:15p

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 76F

Water Surface Temp:  81.6F

Wind Speed & Direction:  SSE8 at trip’s start, increasing slowly to SSE12 by trip’s end

Sky Conditions:  90% low grey cloud cover through 9:00a, then slowly clearing to 40% white clouds on a blue sky by trip’s end

Water Level: ~22.56 feet above full pool with a release of 5,744 cfs ongoing.  Despite this release, the lake still rose another 0.54 feet in the last 24 hours.

GT = 15

 

 Wx SNAPSHOT:

11JUN16

 

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 1632 – live shad for mixed bag of whites, hybrid and drum

**Area 1760 – downrigging for sparse white bass

**Area 1761 – strong hybrid bite on live shad in 32′ with baits set at 24 to 29′

 

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

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