This past Friday morning, June 10th, I was joined by 9-year-old Ethan Munoz for a Fort Hood SKIES program fishing trip on Lake Belton.  More information on this program for military kids appears at the end of this report.

Ethan Munoz of West Fort Hood gives the thumbs up with one of the many white bass we caught via downrigging and using live shad.

Belton Lake is badly flooded now, with nearly 22 feet of flood water and the elevation still rising as Lake Proctor continues to dump water into the Leon River which then flows into Belton.

There is now only on public location available to launch a boat and it is a bit dicey, but, we made do and got out fishing around 6:45am.

First, let me say that Ethan really knew how to endear himself to his fishing guide.  He told me that being a fisherman was always a dream of his (he was doing great so far!), and then asked me how long I’d been fishing.  I told him I’d been fishing since I was just 2 years old.  He said, “Wow, that’s a lot of years ago.  When were you born?”   I told him to take a guess.  He said, “Um, maybe in 1942.”  I am 47 and was born in 1969  (Ethan was no longer doing so well).

Thanks to a nearly calm surface, the location of both baitfish and the gamefish that feed upon them were able to be detected from a distance thanks to the optics I keep aboard.  We headed to the action and saw on sonar that there were far more fish beneath the surface about midway down in the water column than there were at the surface.  This called for a downrigging approach.

I got the #Cannon #Digi-Troll #downriggers all rigged and ready to go, equipped with a tandem rig with Pet Spoons on the starboard side and a 3-armed umbrella rig with Pet Spoons on the port side.  We didn’t have to go 50 yards before we had our first fish on within seconds of wetting a line.  Just like that Ethan had earned a TPWD First Fish Award!  We went on to catch an even dozen white bass in this fashion as singles and doubles came aboard steadily from the 18-20 foot level.

Next, we tried to up the ante and catch a few larger fish by targeting hybrid striped bass with live shad.  Fortunately, just as we discussed this option, a light S. wind picked up and began to disturb the surface of the lake and move the water.  This typically improves the fish, and, today, certainly turned the hybrid stripers on.  We sat in one location at a breakline from 25-30 feet and boated 5 hybrid stripers, 3 white bass, 1 blue cat, and 1 drum.  I kept an eye on Ethan, suspecting that, as for most 9-year-olds, watching the end of a baited rod would not hold his attention for too long.  Once I saw the novelty wearing off, I was prepared to introduce our final “skill” of the day — that of shallow water panfishing for sunfish with floats and bait.

This shallow water fishing produced a variety of sunfish and 2 blacktail shiners.  About the time the 27th fish was landed, mom, grandma, and sister showed up in the family mini-van, letting us know that 4 hours had gone by quickly.  As we headed back in to the launch area Ethan said, “I always wanted to be a fisherman, and now my dream came true.”

SKIES Unlimited stands for School of Knowledge, Inspiration, Exploration and Skills. SKIES Unlimited classes are open to children of active duty military personnel, retirees, Department of the Army civilians, and to Department of Defense contractors.  To enroll in SKIES Unlimited activities, children must be registered with CYSS at Building 121 on 761st Tank Destroyer Avenue (right across from the Chili’s restaurant).

There is no charge for registration; parents must bring an ID that shows their affiliation with the military, the child’s shot records, and the report from a recent physical exam. While the SKIES Unlimited programs are not free, many military families are eligible for sizeable credits toward SKIES Unlimited activities. There is a $300 “Army Strong” credit available to each child when their parent is deployed.

TALLY = 27Fish, all caught and released

 

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 6:45a

End Time:  11:00a

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 74F

Water Surface Temp:  80.1

Wind Speed & Direction:  Calm at trips start, tapering quickly up to S7 at mid-morning.

Sky Conditions:  40% high clouds on a hazy sky.

Water Level: 615.97 and rising with 594.0 being full pool.  Water being released at 5,732 cubic feet per second.  Despite the release, the lake rose .57 feet in the past 24 hours

Other: GT= 0

 

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 1578 thru 493 downrigging parallel to shore with weights at 18-22 feet

**Area 1759 mixed bag fishing for whites, hybrid, blue cat, and drum on live shad fished just off bottom in 25-30′ on breakline

**Area 1583 shallow panfishing

 

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 Thursday, June 2nd, I fished both a morning and an evening trip on Lake Belton.  The morning was spent was Will Almond of Kempner, TX, and David Ross of Salado, TX.  These fellows became friends while working as pharmacists for HEB.

David Ross with a nice 4.25 pound Belton Lake hybrid striper caught on live shad at mid-morning in about 40 feet of water.

Will Almond with one of many hybrid stripers we took off the windward side of a breakline in 40 feet of water.  Short hybrid and white bass were also mixed in with the bruisers.

These two Thursday trips would wind up being the last two trips I would fish on Belton for some time to come, as rising flood water forced closure of all of the lakes Corps of Engineers ramps the following day.

For the time being, I’ll be relocating my efforts down to Lake Walter E. Long (formerly known as Decker Lake), near the Austin-Bergstrom Airport and Travis County Convention Center.  This “hot water” power plant lake fishes well for white bass, hybrid striper, sunfish, and largemouth bass.

As Will, David and I got going on Thursday, we knew we would be interrupted by thunderstorms at some point, as the low pressure system that had already dropped so much rain would sit right over central Texas and swirl storm cells over us in a counter-clockwise, hurricane-like fashion.

The two were just happy to leave the work-a-day world behind for a few hours, regardless of the conditions, so, off we went.

During our first hour on the water, we encountered some light topwater feeding activity with white bass and a few small largemouth pushing young of the year shad to the surface.  Having see the same thing happen around this time on Tuesday’s trip, this morning I came equipped with popping cork rigs specifically intended for this sort of fishing.  Fortunately, both fellow could cast both far and accurately, and they capitalized on this scenario, putting 21 fish in the boat before our first encounter with weather.

Long story short, we simply rode out a thunder-and-lightning laced deluge of rain for about 70 minutes just pulled up onto a bank in a steep sided cove so as not to be the high point for lightning to find.  We kept an eye on the weather radar app on my smartphone, and, when the radar and absence of lightning indicated all was well, we got right back to fishing (in the rain).

We hit a hump topping out at 25 feet and boated a blue cat and 2 white bass on slabs with a few more white bass and short hybrid on live shad before that area played out.

About this time, a bit of a wind from the SSE developed, so I moved us so as to fish on several underwater features being impacted by this wind.

From this point on we used live shad of all sizes to put an additional 20 fish in the boat including white bass, legal-sized hybrid stripers, and short hybrid, as well.

As we headed back in, I looked for an opportunity to demonstrate how the pair of #Cannon downriggers I have work, as the fellows had express curiosity about them.  I found a tightly schooled bunch of white bass on sonar in about 22 feet of water as we headed back to the boat ramp, so, we U-turned, dropped the downrigging gear in, and plucked one white bass out of the pack with a 3-armed umbrella rig equipped with Pet Spoons.

I extended the trip to ensure we fished well beyond the 4-hours that the fellows had paid for, and ended up our day around 1:30p with 53 fish boated.

 

TALLY = 53 fish, all caught and released

 

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 7:00a

End Time:  1:30p

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 71F

Water Surface Temp:  75-76F

Wind Speed & Direction:  SSW9-10

Sky Conditions:  100% grey cloud cover with rain through 9:45a, then slowly clearing to 40% white clouds on a blue sky by trip’s end

Water Level: ~11 feet above full pool with no release of water currently ongoing due to flooding in the lower Brazos River near Houston and Bryan.

GT = 95

 

 Wx SNAPSHOT:

 

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 1756 and the coves to the N and S of this point — topwater whites on popping rig

**Area 1632 – slab and shad for whites, hybrid, and a bluecat

**Area 1636/1622 hybrid on live shad

**Area 618/1666 hybrid on live shad

**1634 – downrigging demo for 1 white bass

 

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 Tuesday, May 31st, as Belton Lake continued to rapidly rise, I welcomed brothers John and Bruce Campbell aboard for a morning in pursuit of hybrid striped bass.

Bruce Campbell with a nice Belton Lake hybrid striper caught on live shad at mid-morning in about 40 feet of water.

From left: Bruce and John Campbell with the very first hybrid striped bass of the day, which, coincidentally, was the first hybrid striper that John had ever landed.  This fish hit a trolled 3-armed umbrella rig equipped with Pet Spoons.

Due to multiple boatramp closures, I had to launch at Arrowhead Park and drive by boat to Cedar Creek to pick these fellows up where they were camping.

Both brothers are originally from Arizona, but Bruce now lives in north Austin.  John drove over from Arizona pulling a camper and camped at the Corps of Engineers park at Cedar Creek on Belton where Bruce joined him for an overnight stay before the two headed to Bruce’s place for graduation exercises later in the week.  The flooding situation is so fluid (pun kind of intended), that I phoned the park rangers right at closing time (4:30pm) on Monday to determine the status of the various ramps I had as options to launch from for this trip.

We got going around 6:30am under dark, murky skies.  We headed to shallow water first where what little light was coming through the clouds would be penetrating.  We scored quickly when John’s downrigger rod went off with a double on two of the three Pet Spoons on his 3-armed umbrella rig, landing a short white bass and a keeper hybrid.

John typically fishes from a smaller boat equipped with a less-than-10 horsepower motor and trolling motor, trolling for high-altitude trout in several Arizona lakes.  One of his most productive tactics is trolling cow bells, which are a long, linear contraption of weights, spinner blades and colored beads which, for some reason, appeal to trout and salmon species – most likely because they imitate a school of baitfish.  Most of John’s fishing is done in 20 feet of water or less, so the concept of controlled depth trolling with my #Cannon downrigging equipment was intriguing to him.

Subsequent passes in this area yielded little, so we made our way into progressively clearer water.

As we cruised, I spotted a nice pod of white bass surface feeding on young of the year shad over 35-40 feet of water.  We eased into these fish so as not to spook them, and cast white slabs into them and retrieved these lures quickly to keep our baits up high in the water column.  About every other well-placed cast caught a fish while the action lasted (about 25 minutes).  During this time we boated an additional 17 fish.

From this point on, we never saw any additional surface action as the wind picked up and rippled the surface.  All of our fishing through the close of the trip was done with live shad on downlines at two different areas.

This tactic added another 18 fish to our count, including a number of keeper (18+ inch) hybrid stripers on the combination of threadfin and gizzard shad we offered.

As I dropped the fellows off at the very same location we’d begun our day at, we noted the water had risen another 5-6″ in the several hours we were on the water.

 

TALLY = 37 fish, all caught and released

 

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 6:30a

End Time:  12:15p

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 72F

Water Surface Temp:  75.8F

Wind Speed & Direction:  SSW9-10

Sky Conditions:  100% grey cloud cover for the entire trip.

Water Level: ~9.75 feet above full pool with no release of water currently ongoing due to flooding in the lower Brazos River near Houston and Bryan.

GT = 95

 

 Wx SNAPSHOT:

 

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 1668 downrigging at first light

**Area 507 topwater whites

**Area 1629 hybrid on live shad

**Area 1634/1681 hybrid on live shad

 

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 Memorial Day Monday, May 30th, I welcomed Mr. Chad Zuckero and his boys, 10-year-old Josh and 6-year-old Blaine, aboard for some “guy time”.

Chad and his oldest son, Josh, with a nice Belton Lake hybrid striper caught on live shad.

Chad and his younger son, Blaine, with a nice Belton Lake hybrid striper caught on live shad.

 

Despite a number of attempts at a number of venues using a variety of tactics, the trio just hadn’t put it all together in a way that produced the kind of success that keeps kids interested.  Chad was hoping to not just catch fish, but to understand the approach to catching them so as to help his boys be successful.

We started with the basics — small hooks, small weights, small floats, and worms, and targeted sunfish in the newly flooded vegetation around the lake’s edge.

Our planned 6:30am start was delayed an hour and a quarter by persistent lightning overhead.  As we all sat in the family car, I got to cover my standard safety briefing and talk about how we’d approach the day once the storm cleared, so at least those things were out of the way allowing to get right down to fishing once it was safe to do so.

When we got on the water around 7:45, I headed to a pair of protected coves so wind would not negatively impact the boys’ control of their presentations.  I did one quick demo and the boys, both fast learners, got the hang of things and consistently landed sunfish on their own over the next hour and a half.  We wound up with 31 sunfish of various sorts: bluegill, greens, and longears.  I then suggested we give another tactic in another area a try for some even larger fish — the white bass.

As we headed to open water the winds really kicked up and boat control was a bit tough, thus, we only worked one downrigger at first.  The fishing was so consistent thanks to the fish being tightly buckled down on one area, that we picked up a fish on nearly every pass.  This led me to “fast forward” to our third tactic, that of fishing with live shad.

As we made the switch to shad over top of the fish we’d been downrigging for, our catch began to include more hybrid and fewer white bass — a nice problem to have!

Once this fairly shallow area played out as the skies brightened and the wind calmed, we moved on to deeper water more significantly impacted by the wind and continued catching a nice mix of keeper hybrid, short hybrid and white bass right up until the fish finally quit biting around 12:15pm.

TALLY = 52 fish, all caught and released

 

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 7:45a (due to lightning delay)

End Time:  12:30p

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 68F

Water Surface Temp:  75.8F

Wind Speed & Direction:  Calm winds after the thunderstorm passed which delayed our start, and until the skies began to clear.  Winds SE17-20 as the western-most edge of the clouds passed over and started to allow clearing, followed by lighter winds at S6-8 for the balance of the trip.

Sky Conditions:  100% grey cloud cover for the first 2 hours, followed by rapidly clearing conditions.

Water Level: ~9 feet above full pool with no release of water currently ongoing.  As I departed Roger’s Park, the park had been shut down, thus locking me in — the Corps Ranger left the gate code on my windshield.

GT = 50

 

 Wx SNAPSHOT:

 

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 1753/4 sunfish

**Area 1634 whites and hybrid on downriggers and then live shad

**Area 1619 and 618 – hybrid on live shad

 

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

Last Saturday, May 28th, I conducted the 2016 season’s fourth SKIFF (Soldiers’ Kids Involved in Fishing Fun) trip.  Joining me for this adventure were Mrs. Jessica Ochoa, and her 11-year-old daughters, Nevaeh Ochoa and Alycia Williams, as well as the baby of the family, little Arianna Ochoa.

From left: Neveah Ochoa and Alycia Williams earned their TPWD First Fish Awards as they targeted sunfish in the newly flooded green brush on Lake Belton.

U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Ochoa is currently deployed to South Korea where he serves as a mortarman in an infantry unit.

Since neither Nevaeh nor Alycia had ever caught a fish before, we started with the basics this afternoon, using long, telescoping sunfish poles and slip float baited with pieces of worm to attract a variety of sunfish from out of the newly flooded greenery around the lake’s perimeter.  The girls were soon onto their first fish, thus easily earning their TPWD First Fish Awards.  After each of the girls “got the hang of it”, it was tough for me to keep up taking their fish off the hook and rebaiting.   By the time we decided to give the sunfish a rest, the girls had boated exactly 40 sunfish, including longears, bluegill, and green sunfish.

Next, we headed to open water to pursue larger quarry — the white bass.  For this segment of our trip, I opted to go with downriggers after sonar revealed large schools of fish in 18-22 feet.  We started off slowly with one 3-armed umbrella rigged fished on the starboard downrigger.  Once the girls each caught a few fish, we expanded to one 3-armed umbrella rig and one tandem rig, all outfitted with Pet Spoons fished now on 2 downriggers.  Soon the girls were once again hard to keep up with as we landed singles, doubles and even a triple (one fish on each of the 3 Pet Spoons on the umbrella rig).

As the 24th white bass came aboard, little Arianna had had all of the fun, sun, and waves her little body could stand and she began to get a bit cranky.  Wisely, Jessica decided to call it a day while all was still manageable and we headed back in.

The Austin Fly Fishers donates funds and seeks funding from individuals and organizations to make this SKIFF program a reality for homefront spouses and their children.

They do not ask for thanks or recognition, they simply desire others to take advantage of the opportunities this program offers.  If your spouse is away on military duty, your child(ren) qualify for a free SKIFF fishing adventure.  Please just phone me at the number below to make arrangements for your trip!

 

 

TALLY = 64 FISH, all caught and released

 

CLICK TO RETURN TO FISHING GUIDE’S HOME PAGE

CLICK TO RETURN TO FISHING GUIDE’S FACEBOOK PAGE

 

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 4:30p

End Time:  8:30

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 91F

Water Surface Temp:  76F

Wind Speed & Direction:  Light and variable first hour or so, then going SE6-7

Sky Conditions:  Steadily clearing from a fully overcast morning.

Water Level: ~8.25 feet above full pool and steadily rising due to flooding downstream on the Brazos and therefore no release from the dam.

Other: GT= 0

 

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area  1753 – Sunfish on slipfloats

**Area 816 to 172 – 24 white bass on downriggers along the 18-22 foot contour

 

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