This past Saturday morning I fished with Mr. Joe Phillips of Killeen, his six-year-old son, C.J. Phillips, and Joe’s six year old nephew, Rodney Phillips, of Copperas Cove.
Can you smile any bigger than that?!? Little Rodney Phillips of Copperas Cove landed this hybrid after it struck a downrigged Pet Spoon.
Not to be outdone, minutes after Rodney landed his big hybrid, C.J. chipped in with one of his own.
And what’s better than landing three fish at a time with your best fishin’ buddy?
This was a multi-species trip on Belton Lake and our aim was to keep the boys engaged for as long as that was possible by keeping them reeling in whatever manner of fish cooperated to help meet that objective.
At first light we begin downrigging in between 20 and 25 feet of water and nearly instantly had a double hookup on, allowing both boys to break the ice with white bass. As we were re-rigging the downriggers to take our second pass, fish began to burst on the surface chasing after shad all around us, however, this was not like a traditional lowlight top water feed. Rather, the fish would come up very briefly and then submerge. This took place over a large expanse of water, but still made it difficult to to get close enough to these schools of fish for a long enough time to sight cast to them. So, after landing a few fish by sight casting using soft plastics, we returned to downrigging and this proved to be a much more efficient approach.
By around 9 AM, the lowlight bite, which was extended by a nice deck of gray clouds, began to wane. To continue to hold the boys’ attention, Joe and I took them up shallow and targeted sunfish for about 40 minutes. The boys did well at this, and each landed a variety of sunfish including green sunfish, bluegill sunfish, longear sunfish, and redear sunfish.
When the novelty of sunfishing wore off, we headed out once again in search of white bass, this time targeting them with downriggers fished over deeper breaklines. Based on how I saw a number of bottom oriented schools of white bass respond to our downrigging approach, I decided to give the use of slabs a try in a vertical orientation. In our last 30 minutes on the water, we piled on the fish count with several dozen smallish white bass which kept the boys engaged right to the very last at around 10:45, when talked turned Chicken McNuggets and Longhorn football.
TALLY = 74 fish, all caught and released
TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:
Start Time: 6:45a
End Time: 10:45a
Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 58F
Water Surface Temp: 82.4F
Wind Speed & Direction: SSW under 4mph
Sky Conditions: A thin grey deck of clouds offering 90% coverage but still bright conditions
Water Level: ~0.22 feet high following a bit of inflow from the area-wide 1″ rain the previous Sunday/Monday, 26/27 Sept.
GT = 30
AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:
**Area 1657 – low light sporadic topwater
**Area 1602-1790 downrigging for white bass & short hybrid
**Area 502 – sunfish
**Area 1589-687-1584 – white bass on downrigger to find them, then capitalized with vertical jigging from a hover
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