This past Saturday evening, September 17th, I fished on Belton Lake with Rolf and Nina K., and their 3 boys, Roman, Dorian, and Karsten, ages nine, six, and four, respectively. The boys’ aunt, Jo De, who was visiting from New Hampshire, coordinated the trip by phone with me yesterday and joined us, as well.
Dorian K. and his dad, Rolf, with one of the many white bass we took by downrigging and, around sunset, by casting to schooling fish on the surface.
Karsten and his mom, Nina, with one of the white bass he reeled in after it chased down a Pet Spoon being trolled behind a downrigger.
Big brother Roman with a nice white bass of his own, also taken on a downrigger within a half-hour of our 5pm start.
We agreed that the focus of the trip would be making the boys successful, and since none of them had fished before, we simply went in order from youngest to oldest and had the boys take turns on the downriggers each time one or two white bass struck either the tandem rig or the three-armed umbrella rig, both of which were equipped with Pet Spoons.
After three full rounds for each boy, I could see the novelty of downrigging was wearing off a bit, so we changed things up and moved into shallow water to target sunfish. We used live bait under slip floats to present our small offerings to sunfish in cover-rich shallow water. Each of the boys took four rounds on the rod before getting antsy once again to “go fast” and do a little something different.
With the sun getting close to setting, I began to look for larger and more heavily schooled white bass slowly making their way shallower for the final low-light feed. Again, we caught singles and doubles on the tandem rig and three-armed umbrella rig for about 25 minutes until the sun got low enough to spur on the first of the evening’s top water action. Once the white bass began feeding on the surface they fed hard and continuously right up until 8 PM and then shut down.
Between sunfishing and our second attempt at downrigging, I took the time to show the two older boys and Nina (the only adult with a license) how to cast so that if and when the white bass began to feed on top, we could take full advantage of it with 3 rods working the fish. This turned out to be a wise choice, because there was plenty to take advantage of.
By the time the last fish had chased shad to the surface, we had tallied a total of 65 fish. Not bad for a boatload of rookies! This evening, all three boys earned a Texas Parks and Wildlife Department “First Fish” award.
TALLY = 65 fish, all caught and released
TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:
Start Time: 5:00p
End Time: 8:00p
Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 93F
Water Surface Temp: 85.4F
Wind Speed & Direction: E9
Sky Conditions: <10% cloud cover.
Water Level: ~0.01 feet high. Lake is at full pool with only evaporative losses and no water being released.
GT = 50
Wx SNAPSHOT:
Bob Maindelle
Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service
254.368.7411 (call or text)
Website:www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com
E-mail:Bob@HoldingTheLineGuideService.com
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