“Kids Fish, Too!” trip nets 48 for the Glass girls — Lake Belton, 09 June ’17

This past Friday morning, June 9th, I conducted a “Kids Fish, Too!” trip on Belton Lake with Ember and Ever Glass. Accompanying the girls as chaperones were their grandfather, Joe Glass, and the girls’ father, Michael Glass, of the DFW area.

EMBER CAT

 

Ember saved the best for last, landing this 4 pound blue catfish just as we were about to wrap up our morning excursion.

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Both girls handled the downrigger rods well, thus, white bass made up the majority of our catch this morning.

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Ember and Ever did equally well on sunfish caught out of shallow cover this morning.  Here, Ember shows the largest sunfish we caught, a nice redear that came off a mix of brush and rocks.

My “Kids Fish, Too!” trips are less expensive, and shorter duration trips targeted towards elementary aged kids. These trips focus on quantity over quality in order to keep up with these younger kids’ short attention spans.

Today we divided the trip into four parts that played out over the span of about four hours. The first part of our trip we spent searching for white bass aggressively forcing young of the year shad to the surface and creating a commotion on the surface thus letting us know right where the fish were and where to cast to. The girls each caught one fish in the very weak, and short-lived, surface action found today under windy conditions and dark early-morning skies.

The second part of our trip involved downrigging for white bass that had pushed down further in the water column and also further offshore after the initial topwater feed was over.

The third part of our trip involved fishing for sunfish in shallow cover using poles equipped with slip floats.

The final part of our trip involved using slip floats in deep water and using fresh, dead shad as bait for small blue catfish.

All of these approaches contributed to our final take of 48 fish. The largest fish of the trip was the last one landed. Ember brought in a 4 pound blue catfish on medium action spinning gear. She brought this fish up from out of 40 feet of water and did a very good job of it.

TALLY: 48 FISH, all caught and released

Wx Snapshot:

09JUN17

 

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 6:15a

End Time: 10:45a

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 74F

Water Surface Temp: 80.1F

Wind Speed & Direction: SE

Sky Conditions: Fully grey skies all morning with the lightest of occasional precip. falling in the last hour

Water Level: 0.50 feet above full pool and falling; 1,589 cfs release at Belton Dam

GT = 5

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 1641 & 562 – light topwater white bass action

**Area 794 thru 1792 – downrigging for whites at mid-morning

**Area 1583 – sunfish up shallow

**Area vic 150 – blue cat on fresh, dead shad under slip-floats

 

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

Twitter: www.twitter.com/bobmaindelle

Before that Long Drive to College — 94 Fish, Lake Belton, 08 June ’17

This past Thursday morning, June 8th, I fished with Mike Mansell, his son Peyton, and Denver Holman, a friend of the family. My intention was to introduce the three to a number of effective summertime tactics for Belton and Stillhouse.

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Graduating Belton High School quarterback Peyton Mansell with one of several nice hybrid he landed before heading off to play football as an Iowa Hawkeye.

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Mike Mansell, a West Pointer and Army dentist, with his best hybrid of the trip.

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Family friend Denver Holman chipped in with a few white bass, hybrid, and catfish of his own.

 
Mike is a dentist in the U.S. Army and, as our conversation later revealed, a fellow West Point graduate. Peyton is headed to college to play football as an Iowa Hawkeye. Denver is the younger brother of Peyton’s girlfriend, who is on an athletic scholarship at Abilene Christian University.

As was the case yesterday, we experienced a solid topwater feed by white bass up until the sun began to shine directly on the water around 7:10 AM. By the time the fish quit hitting our paddletail grubs, my threesome had landed over 30 fish.

We remained in this general vicinity, moved out a bit deeper, and continued to take fish using tandem rigged Pet Spoons behind downriggers.

When the early, shallow bite dried up, we moved out to deeper water to hunt hybrid with livebait and to specifically target blue catfish using fresh, dead shad.

Sonar revealed hybrid striper slightly up off bottom in around 40 feet of water, so we put live threadfin shad down to tempt them and, over about an hour’s time landed 13 legal hybrid plus a number of white bass in addition to a few blue cat.

Once sonar revealed that the hybrid had moved out and that the blue cat had moved in, we switched over to fishing slip floats to present fresh, dead shad at depth to tempt them. Although most of the blue cat were small, they were more than cooperative, and very engaging. By 10 AM we had landed right at 80 fish. With about 30 minutes remaining in our trip, I offered that we could try one last area for hybrid once again and everyone was agreeable to that.

As I searched for hybrid, I found heavily congregated white bass s lying belly-to-bottom over a 15 yard area in about 42 feet of water. This scenario is just right for summertime “smoking” tactics using slabs. We quickly got set up over top of these fish using my Ulterra trolling motor’s Spot Lock function. This smoking tactic accounted for a quick, final 13 white bass. We were also able to boat one more legal hybrid using a chunk bait on the opposite side of the boat from that which the three were jigging from.

We ended our morning with 94 fish boated including 14 legal hybrid stripers.

 

TALLY: 94 FISH, all caught and released

Wx Snapshot:

08JUN17

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 6:15a

End Time: 10:45a

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 73F

Water Surface Temp: 80.1F

Wind Speed & Direction: ESE

Sky Conditions: Fair skies with light haze and 10% wispy white cloud cover

Water Level: 0.53 feet above full pool and falling; 1,589 cfs release at Belton Dam

GT = 0

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 794 thru 024 – topwater whites on grubs

**Area 1748 & 133 – downrigging tandem rigged Pets for whites

**Area 152 – hybrid on live shad; bluecat on fresh, dead shad

**Area vic 344 – whites on smoked slabs; one hybrid on chunk bait

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

Twitter: www.twitter.com/bobmaindelle