Cove, Killeen boys team up for a haul of 74 fish — Belton, 01 October

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.

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Can you smile any bigger than that?!?  Little Rodney Phillips of Copperas Cove landed this hybrid after it struck a downrigged Pet Spoon.

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Not to be outdone, minutes after Rodney landed his big hybrid, C.J. chipped in with one of his own.

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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

I pick … YOU! — 85 Fish on Belton, Saturday, 24 Sep.

Last Saturday evening I fished a multi-species trip on Lake Belton with Eric and Allison Stokes.

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Allison and Eric Stokes had a successful multi-species trip with me, landing blue catfish, white bass, and hybrid stripers by employing 3 different tactics.  The couple landed 85 fish in under 4 hours.

Allison is a U.S. Army veteran and Eric is still on active duty.  He just returned from deployment and is about to head away from home again for schooling at Fort Lee, VA, so he can advance to the rank of Staff Sergeant (E6).  Allison thought it would be nice to treat him and a friend to a fishing trip before he departed.

When she asked what friend he would like to bring, Eric said, “You!”.   (Big domestic bonus points there!).

The weather was turbulent this evening with a stiff SSE breeze at up to 15mph in advance of a small line of thunderstorms that quickly made their way past us.  We caught catfish in about 26 feet of water for the first 90 minutes of the trip, putting 40 of these whiskered critters in the boat before they shut off.  As we were about to make a move, I thought it prudent to check weather radar given what I saw brewing in the SE sky.  Long story short, we had a 30 minute rain delay from 6:00 to 6:30, afterwhich the skies cleared (as did the lake of almost all fishing and recreational traffic).  So, we had calming conditions and excellent fishing immediately following the storms, and right up until dark.

When we returned to the water, we did a bit of downrigging for suspended white bass over a gently sloping bottom over 25 to 35 feet of water, then, thanks to cloud cover in the western sky, the low light period preceding sunset kicked in early tonight, thus providing us with “a fish every cast” kind of opportunities up shallow for the last 40 minutes of the trip.

We finished up with 85 fish boated and Eric and Allison very glad they spent this time together on the water before their upcoming separation.

 

TALLY = 85 fish, all caught and released

 

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 4:00p

End Time:  8:00p

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 89F

Water Surface Temp:  85.2F

Wind Speed & Direction:  SSE13-15

Sky Conditions: 70% cloud cover on a fair sky; a rain interruption of about 30 minutes from 6:00-6:30p

Water Level: ~0.03 feet low.  Lake is at full pool with only evaporative losses and no water being released.

GT = 10

 

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 1068 – 40 blue catfish

**Area 676-1580 downrigging for white bass

**Area 1812-1813 – white bass on topwater

**Area 009-1763 – white bass on topwater

 

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