Mommas, Don’t Let Yer Babies Grow Up to Be … , 80 Fish with the Covington’s

This past Friday evening I fished a multi-species trip on Lake Belton with Dave Covington of Belton, and his five-year-old son, Levi.

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At 6:00pm, Dave, Levi, and I encountered this massive school of white bass numbering, literally, in the thousands.  The school was 23 feet thick and hung around our boat, drawn by the commotion created by their schoolmates being caught, for 25-30 minutes.  We caught a fish on most every drop of our slabs, quickly taking 40 fish during this feeding spree.

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Dave Covington with his son, 5-year-old Levi, holding a 13 inch class white bass — one of the 80 we landed this evening using both downrigging and vertical jigging techniques.

This fishing trip was one of several “outdoorsy” activities the family planned to participate in as they camped out for the weekend at Cedar Ridge Park on Belton Lake. We began our trip at 3:30 and fished right up until dark at 7 PM. Given Levi Levi’s age, I came prepared to fish in a number of different ways so as to keep his interest up.

Of the various fishing options I described to Dave, he thought starting off by downrigging would be a good move.  I took us to a relatively timber-free area where I thought we could contact fish using the Cannon downriggers, and soon after arriving and looking things over with sonar, we put a single downrigger ball in the water set to 30 feet with a tandem rigged pair of Pet Spoons on the business end. Our first line was in the water less than 30 seconds and we had our first of many downrigger-caught fish on the line. We alternated between a two-arm and three-armed rig and routinely caught both singles and doubles ranging from one-year- old fish to three-year-old fish.

In a number of instances the fish so aggressively tracked after the downrigger ball, that I knew they would respond to a vertical tactic, so, several times we stopped downrigging, put the boat into a hover using the Ulterra trolling motor (the newest version just released with much improved Spot Lock capability), and let our slabs down into the melee. It was not uncommon to catch 10 or 15 fish at a clip before the fish lost interest. When they did, we simply went back to downrigging and repeated the whole process.

We took a short break to add some variety to the trip for Levi’s sake by going up shallow and fishing for sunfish, picking up 15 bluegill, green sunfish, longear sunfish, and redear sunfish (and keeping each one in the livewell, although we did stop just short of naming them individually!).

It was at this transition from sunfishing back to angling for white bass that young Levi burst forth into song, charming us with his rendition of that Willie ‘n’ Waylon classic “Mommas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys”.  Enough said.

Right around 6 PM we encountered a massive school of white bass numbering in the thousands. Although Levi’s interest was starting to fade at this point, David and I managed to keep him engaged as we quickly added 40 more fish to our count before the school drifted off. We followed that up with a final round of downrigging and took our fish count up to a grand total of 80 fish boated by the time the evening was through and night had come.

TALLY = 80 fish, all caught and released

 

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 3:30p

End Time:  7:00p

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 68F

Water Surface Temp:  75.5F

Wind Speed & Direction:  NNE7-8

Sky Conditions: 100% grey cloud cover

Water Level: ~0.22 feet high and slowly rising thanks to light, area-wide rainfall

GT = 50

 

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 211-1675-1619 – rig to jig

**Area 1753 – sunfish

**Area vic 817 – smoking

**Area vic 1666 – low light downrigging at 20′ breakline

 

 

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

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-LGrD-sm7Bo6tDPIv0z4jg

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/holdingtheline/

Eager to Learn and Willingly Coached — 112 Fish, Lake Belton

This past Friday morning, I finished with Kevin Yuille and Bobby Gordon, both warrant officers serving in Army aviation.

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From left:  Kevin Yuille and Bobby Gordon stayed hard after it for four full hours and surpassed the 100 fish mark by 10:45am with a 7:15am start.  The combination of warm water and the mild cold front that passed yesterday had the fish in high gear all morning.

The conditions today were near perfect. We had a balmy northeast breeze following the passage of yesterday’s mild cold front, leaving in its wake some thick gray cloud cover. The combination of cloud cover, light wind, and still warm water all worked together to have the white bass in a frenzy this morning.

The frenzy began up shallow at first light with occasional wolf packs of fish making their whereabouts obvious by breaking the surface briefly. This action then slowly moved deeper in the water column and further away from shore as the morning progressed, but the strong bite persisted for a full 3 1/2 hours beyond the obscured sunrise.

While the fish were visible early on, we sight cast using soft plastics and blade baits, and then as the action moved deeper, I searched out consolidated schools of fish with sonar, hovered on top of them with my new #Ulterra trolling motor (love it!!), and we used two vertical tactics – – slabbing and easing – – to continue to put fish in the boat. We wrapped up the morning with exactly 112 fish boated for our efforts.

One of the reasons Kevin and Bobby did so well today was because they were both eager to learn and willing to be coached. When I saw something in their technique that was going to cost them fish, I would point it out, and they would earnestly attempt to correct whatever deficiency I picked up on.

TALLY = 112 fish, all caught and released

 

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 7:15a

End Time:  11:15a

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 62F

Water Surface Temp:  75.5F

Wind Speed & Direction:  NNE7-8

Sky Conditions: 100% grey cloud cover

Water Level: ~0.15 feet high and slowly rising thanks to light, area-wide rainfall

GT = 23

 

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 1625-1665-1822-788-1668-164-171 vertical tactics for white bass following an early, low light sub-surface bite in shallow water.

 

 

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

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-LGrD-sm7Bo6tDPIv0z4jg

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/holdingtheline/