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 saved the best for last, landing this 4 pound blue catfish just as we were about to wrap up our morning excursion.
Both girls handled the downrigger rods well, thus, white bass made up the majority of our catch this morning.
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:
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
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