white bass

HE – 1,000 QUESTIONS; SHE – 1,000 FISH; 144 FISH @ BELTON

by Bob Maindelle

WHO I FISHED WITH: This past Friday morning, July 31st, I fished with long-time Belton Lake multi-species angler Steve Webb of Harker Heights and his 11-year-old daughter, Bailey (nicknamed Skeeter). Steve books his fishing trips like I book my fishing trips in that he has a purpose in mind and a goal he wants to accomplish by the time his trip with a particular guide is concluded. Today, he came out with me specifically to “pick my brain” about summertime downrigging.  He wanted to see how it is done in a real-world scenario, then do it himself so he can enjoy the results when he returns to his own boat and fishes on his own. I encouraged Steve to come with a prepared list of questions, which he did, neatly written down in a rain-proof notebook.  Most of the questions I answered on the water, the balance we reserved for the parking lot as the trip concluded. In addition to all of this, Miss Bailey has been tracking the number of fish she’s landed this calendar year.  Coming into the morning, her count stood at 988 fish; just a dozen shy of 1,000.  A secondary goal of ours was to see her reach her 1,000 fish goal.

PHOTO CAPTION #1:  That’s Steve Webb and his daughter, Bailey, with a few of the white bass we took with both downrigging tactics on Pet Spoons and vertical tactics on MAL Lures under pre-frontal conditions.   PHOTO CAPTION #2: That’s Bailey’s 1,000th fish of the year, caught sight-casting to schooling white bass under low light conditions using a MAL Lure. WHEN WE FISHED: 31 July, 2020, AM

WHERE WE FISHED: Lake Belton

HOW WE FISHED: Given the SSE wind and humid feel to the air, I felt pretty confident that topwater action would emerge under low-light conditions this morning and we were not disappointed.  We enjoyed an hour-plus of moderately aggressive topwater action, with Steve and Bailey seated to the left and right of me on my boat’s front casting deck with me in the middle manually running the trolling motor and taking off fish as they landed them on nearly every cast using MAL Lures cast long and worked quickly.  As the direct sun hit the surface, the fish quit and we had to move on. We had a short lull in the action as the low-light bite stopped and the open water bite developed, aided by a mid-summer cold-front’s arrival, complete with a wind shift out of the west and accompanying cloud cover. The action built to a crescendo, peaking between 8:30 and 9:30 as the west wind’s velocity peaked during that time and cloud cover built to 100%.  During this time we had briefly schooling white bass  within 100 yards of us about 50% of the time.  Even though these fish did not stay up long, they appeared frequently enough for us to get a bead on where the fish were and where they weren’t.  Downrigging put a slow, steady feed of fish in the boat, but, more importantly, allowed me to observe sonar for heavy concentrations of fish worthy of stopping atop of to work vertically for. We did just that on a number of occasions, really racking up the numbers on MAL Lures worked fast and vertical.  After reading about the MAL Lures all summer, this was Steve’s first opportunity to see them in action for himself.  Long story short, he bought 6 of them on the spot in the parking lot after our trip was concluded!!   Read about MAL Lures here: MAL LURES Around 9:30, the white bass were still feeding hard, but, one other thing Steve had requested for this trip was that we leave some time to do some of the shallow water sunfishing with Bailey which the two of them had read of in my reports. We left the white bass biting and headed up shallow to work live bait under light floats for sunfish, landing 31 of them before calling it a day and rolling home just ahead of a line of storms which pushed in from the WNW.  A great day of fishing with a great student of fishing and his pretty daughter!!

TALLY: 144 fish caught and released

OBSERVATIONS:   Classic pre-frontal conditions and fishing today.  Fishing was solid under low light with southerly winds, then under brighter, mid-morning conditions, the westerly wind shift took place and the fishing improved sharply, staying excellent until scaling back a bit as the winds tapered before turning NW with spotty storms spawned along the front all afternoon.

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time:  6:20A

End Time: 10:45A

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 73F

Elevation:  1.42′ low, 0.05′ 24-hour change, 51 CFS flow

Water Surface Temp:  84.5F

Wind Speed & Direction: SSE7 before sunrise, steadily shift through S, to SW, to W during our time on the water.  There was a peak wind velocity from 8:30 to 9:30 went the winds went westerly, during which the fish activity also peaked. Sky Condition: 20% cloud cover with white clouds on a clear sky, slowly transitioning to full, bright grey coverage as the winds went westerly

Moon Phase: Waxing gibbous moon w/ 3 days until full moon

GT = 70

Wx SNAPSHOT: Look at that windshift — a fisherman’s dream!!!

 

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area  013 to B0039G topwater progressing WNW to ESE through the low-light period, 42 white bass

**Area vic 684/685/688 – downrigging leading to vertical work with MAL Lures; 71 white bass **Area vic 502 – 31 sunfish  

 

Bob Maindelle

Full-time, Professional Fishing Guide and Owner of Holding the Line Guide Service

Belton Lake Fishing Guide, Stillhouse Hollow Fishing Guide

254.368.7411 (call or text)

#WhiteBassFishing #LakeBelton #StillhouseHollow #BeltonFishingGuide #LakeBeltonFishingGuide

#BeltonLakeFishingGuide #stripers #stripedbassfishing #rockfish #sandbass #freshwaterfishing #fishing

#bass #bassfishing #whitebass #panfish #crappie #fishingonaboat #fishingtackle #fishinglife #fishingsport

#fishingaddict #fishingpicoftheday #fishingtime #fishinggear #fishingday

#Fitec

Website: www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

E-mail: Bob@HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/bobmaindelle

Twitter: www.twitter.com/bobmaindelle

PRE-FRONTAL WX SETUP YIELDS 106 FISH @ STILLHOUSE

by Bob Maindelle

WHO I FISHED WITH:  This morning, March 2nd, 2020, I fished with returning guests Tommy and Sylvia Maedgen from near Troy, TX.  Tommy has fished with me twice before, both in pursuit of white bass on Stillhouse.  Sylvia joined him for one of those trips.  Then, just last month, they both returned in their own boat to do some sonar training with new Lowrance gear installed on both console and bow.  Our next trip will be after Belton hybrid in May, Lord willing.

I was excited about getting on the water this morning, as I am any time pre-frontal conditions are brewing.  Making this morning even sweeter was the fact that it came on the end of a 4-day warming spell.

 

 

 

PHOTO CAPTION:   Tommy and Sylvia Maedgen joined me for a nice Texas late winter morning of white bass fishing on Stillhouse.  The couple’s last trip with me yielded 53 fish; this morning, we persisted until we doubled that figure.  The grey skies and southwesterly breeze helped fire up the bite this morning until right around noon.

WHEN WE FISHED:  02 March, 2002, AM

HOW WE FISHED: As hard as it was to ignore bird activity this morning, that is exactly what it took to put fish in the boat.  The “resident” population of wintering gulls on Stillhouse have become conditioned to feed every morning in about 4 distinct locations, whether or not white bass are present.  Although there are a few white bass in these areas, this morning sonar quickly revealed they were few and far between.  Most folks fail to recognize the root cause of the gull action right now is loon activity, not white bass activity.  These loons kill and cripple sunfish which then float or linger near the surface and become easy targets for the gulls, which then draw anglers. A few anglers draw more anglers, and , before you know it, there’s a whole lot of boats and none of them catching anything. Thanks to a state holiday, a few areas with this gull/loon scenario looked like boat parking lots this morning, but few fish were taken in those areas.

Rather, the breakline dropping into the old Lampasas River channel continues to be a steady producer of not only quantities of fish, but quality fish, as well, especially in comparison to the unusually high number of smallish white bass Belton has been pumping out since September.

A few times we commented on how slowly the fish were swimming and reacting to our presentations, all because their surroundings are still in the low 50’s.  Indeed, one white bass I pulled up near trip’s end when the air was warmest felt like an ice pack when touched.

Accordingly, presentations were painfully slow this morning, but consistency in that regard was rewarded over and over again as we used an easing tactic in combination with “match-the-hatch” sized 3/8 oz. Hazy Eye Slabs with stinger hooks attached.  Garmin LiveScope was the ticket to knowing when to move the slab and when to lay off.

I’ve arrayed my infinitely-adjustable LiveScope transducer to view both downward and along the starboard gunwale of my boat.  I position as many clients on that side as possible.  I have two Garmin GPSMAP 1242xsv Touch units mounted on that gunwale so as many as 5 anglers can watch what is happening below them in real-time.  Although the same raw sonar data is being fed to both units from a single transducer, the displays are independently adjustable so those toward the bow can isolate their little “patch” of bottom, and those clients toward the stern can do likewise.  This way, everyone gets a zoomed view of just the vertical segment of water they are working.  It is a sweet setup.  It keeps everyone engaged, enhances their success, and makes us very efficient.

Every once in a while we encountered slightly more active fish up higher in the water column which required a “slow smoking” retrieve, but most fish were bottom-oriented this morning.

Our bite wound down to nothing by noon, with peak activity from 9:15 to 11AM.

 

TALLY: 106 fish caught and released

OBSERVATIONS:  Spotted the first couple mosquito hawks of the year last night while working outdoors.

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time:   7:00A

End Time:  Noon

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 65F

Elevation: 3.27′ low, +0.01 24-hour change, 1 CFS flow

Water Surface Temp:  54F

Wind Speed & Direction: SW8-12 the entire trip

Sky Conditions: 100% grey cloud cover

 

GT = 15

#WhiteBassFishing #LakeBelton #StillhouseHollow

Wx SNAPSHOT:   

 

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 1512 – scattered fish under gulls with loon activity

**Area 988/2017- scattered fish under gulls with loon activity

**Area vic 1358 – channel breakline congregation of whites

**Area vic SH0001C  – channel breakline congregation of whites

**Area 103/746 – channel breakline congregation of whites

**Area vic SH0023C- scattered fish under gulls with loon activity

**Area vic SH0014G – channel breakline congregation of whites

 

 

 

Bob Maindelle

Full-time, Professional Fishing Guide and Owner of Holding the Line Guide Service

Belton Lake Fishing Guide, Stillhouse Hollow Fishing Guide

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

50 MPH WINDS & QUARTER-SIZED HAIL — 102 FISH @ BELTON

by Bob Maindelle

WHO I FISHED WITH: This past  afternoon I fished with Max and Chloe Jorgensen, the 11-year-old twins of Staff Sergeant and Mrs. Jason Jorgensen of Killeen.  SSG Jorgensen, an Army topographic analyst, is currently deployed to Kuwait, leaving behind his wife, twins, and 5- and 2-year old children.  This (Soldiers’ Kids Involved in Fishing Fun) program trip is intended to give homefront parent, like Susan Jorgensen, a bit of a break, and to give kids something to look forward to while their parent is away.  Scheduling a SKIFF trip is as simple as calling me at 254.368.7411.

 

From left: Max and Chloe Jorgensen with the 5.00 pound largemouth Max reeled in.  This fish came out of 50 feet of water and was, no doubt, attracted by the smaller white bass in the large school of suspended fish beneath the boat.

Max and Chloe with white bass — the species that made up the vast majority of this afternoon’s catch.  These fish were suspended from 25 to 45 feet deep over deeper bottoms.

 

WHAT WE FISHED FOR: This was a multi-species trip focused on white bass using artificial lures.

WHERE WE FISHED: Lake Belton

WHEN WE FISHED: Saturday evening, 24 February 2018

HOW WE FISHED:   Fishing was super simple and super productive this afternoon with great conditions prior to the storm.  We fished only 2 locations (with no short hops).  The first area was in 50′, the second in 60′.  At both locations we had suspended fish form up under the boat in 25-45′.  Smoking retrieves of various speeds with both 3/8 and 3/4 oz. slabs did the trick for white bass, hybrid stripers, largemouth bass, crappie, and drum.  I also put out two cutbait rods at our second stop.  They kicked in a few white bass and one largemouth, but the moving artificial baits definitely outperformed them for quantities of smaller fish I targeted with the kids on board.  We boated 102 fish by 5:15p.  At that time weather radar showed a storm cell approaching from the WSW.  We headed for cover and did not get to fish again as the storm activity persisted until after sunset with 50mph winds and quarter-sized hail reported in Morgan’s Point.

OBSERVATIONS/NOTES:  1) The fish were really fired up this afternoon with perfect conditions (at least until the storm moved in).  We had WSW winds at 12mph, grey cloud cover, and a warming trend with surface temps at 52.5F.  2) In comparing notes with fellow guide Jason Weisberg, the afternoon bite seemed more aggressive; we both observed large schools of suspended fish in deep water readily taking our presentations.

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 2:30p

End Time:  6:30p

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start:  52F

Water Surface Temp:  52.8 – 53.1F

Wind Speed & Direction:  ESE6 for first 90 minutes, then dying to nil with fog immediately thickening as the wind died.

Sky Conditions:  Heavy, low cloud cover and fog to the point of limiting visibility to about a mile for the first 90 minutes, then the fog rapidly thickened to under 100′ visibility.

Water Level: Up to 3.11 feet low from 3.46 feet low before this week’s rain

GT = 0

Wx SNAPSHOT:

 

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area B0041C to B0042C – smaller fish on bottom in 46′ responding to snap-jigging and slow easing for 2 hours

**Area B0042C – larger white bass suspended in two distinct 6 foot bands approx. 12-18′ off bottom and at 25-31′ below the surface.  Slow smoking took fish at first, then, as bite slow with dying wind and increasing fog, deadsticking was required.

 

Bob Maindelle, Central Texas Fishing Guide

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