This past Wednesday morning, August 2nd, I fished a Fort Hood SKIESUnlimited program trip with 8-year-old Landon Phillips, and his dad, Major Dan Phillips, who just recently returned from his third deployment to Afghanistan.
Like most kids his age, 8-year-old Landon Phillips preferred the steady action of smaller fish to the longer waits required to put larger fish in the boat. So, we spent a good bit of this morning’s trip up shallow gunning for sunfish. Having his dad home a bit earlier than expected from deployment to Afghanistan was icing on the cake.
After the heavier rains stopped and the clouds thinned from dark grey to white and let some light through, the white bass and hybrid went on the prowl after baitfish, allowing us some action on downriggers and with vertical presentations made with slabs. Landon holds our largest fish of the trip.
As I awoke at 4:15 AM, the sound of distant thunder got me looking on weather radar to see a slow moving storm cell just about to cross over Fort Hood from west to east. The thunder and lightning occurred only on the lead edge of this small storm system, but the rain hung around through around 9:30am.
Dan and Landon were okay with a little discomfort if that is what it took to catch a few fish, so with only a 15 minute delay, we shoved off from the courtesy dock at 6:45 AM on Lake Belton in pursuit of white bass and sunfish sufficient to keep eight-year-old Landon’s string stretched.
The unstable weather and gray, murky conditions definitely put a damper on the fishing during the early morning. We witnessed a widespread school of white bass break on the surface for just minutes along a breakline that slowly transitioned from 15 to 25 feet. As we got to the action, both downriggers went off each with a double, allowing us a quick four fish in the boat, and then the action shut down thereafter as more rain moved in and the clouds thickened.
Suspecting that the whites were not going to really get active again until we experienced some clearing, we began our pursuit of sunfish a bit earlier and stuck with it a bit longer than normal, but Landon really enjoyed the action it provided. Over about a 75 minute span, he put exactly 25 sunfish in the boat including bluegill and green sunfish anywhere from 3 to 7 inches in length.
Just as the sunfishing was slowing down at the one area we had elected to try, the skies began to clear from west to east, and the clouds, although still covering at 100%, went from very dark gray to white.
Almost immediately, we began to see signs of bird and fish activity that simply did not exist during the rainfall.
We made a move to the mouth of a windblown cove, ran sonar over it, saw abundant bait and white bass suspended at 27 to 29 feet beneath the surface, and ran when downriggers over these fish with balls set just 2 to 3 feet above them. We picked up fish on both ‘riggers on three consecutive passes before I put us in a hover using the Spot Lock technology on my Minn Kota trolling motor, after which we began to work the fish over using slabs presented vertically. We put a total of 17 additional fish in the boat including primarily white bass with one hybrid and one largemouth bass in the mix, as well.
For the last 15 minutes of the trip I offered Landon another shot at sunfish, because he really enjoyed the presentation to these fish as well as catching them, and he did indeed elect to spend the last portion of our trip up shallow. With much improved accuracy, Landon fished this second area we chose for sunfish very well, taking our grand total up to exactly 50 fish before we called it a good day.
When Dan asked Landon if he thought mom was going to believe they caught 50 fish, Landon was doubtful. Dan even suggested we take a photograph of my handheld fish counter just to make their story more credible.
At around 11 AM, we called it a great day and wrapped up our successful, albeit soggy, fishing trip on Lake Belton.
TALLY: 50 FISH, all caught and released
TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:
Start Time: 6:45a
End Time: 11:00a
Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 82F
Water Surface Temp: 84.6F
Wind Speed & Direction: NW8 due to an early season, wet cold front’s passage
Sky Conditions: 100% cloud cover
Water Level: 0.21feet low and slowly falling with only evaporative losses of ~0.02 feet per day; 0 cfs release at dam
GT = 0
Wx SNAPSHOT:
AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:
**Area 444 to 484 to 909 to 1238 – strong fishing for 2 full hours under low light and cloud cover; downrigging a 3-armed umbrella with Pet Spoons; 30 fish
**Areas 195 and 189 – sunfishing in the shallows; 14 fish
**Area 1436 – a strong presence of fish; only landed 4 and left them biting
Bob Maindelle
Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service
254.368.7411 (call or text)
Website: www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com
E-mail: Bob@HoldingTheLineGuideService.com
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