Boarded by Game Warden & His Backup – 100 Fish

CLIENTS: This morning, Wednesday, March 25, I welcomed to board retired Texas Parks and Wildlife Department Game Warden, James Connally and his wife, Janis, for a morning of white bass fishing on Lake Belton.

James, as well as his son, Michael, and grandson, Case, have fish with me previously. This was the first time Miss Janis graced the deck of my boat.

 I had an odd, but welcome, thing happened this morning. Normally, after I get my clients aboard, I go over a few safety things, make sure I have the reel handles on the correct side for everyone, and then do some demonstrations about the tactics will be employing during the trip. Well, this morning, the fish cooperated such that as as I was demonstrating the slow-smoking tactic white bass showed up and started chasing the slab I was working none too precisely. Seeing this, I put rods in James and Janis’ hands immediately, and they got right down to brass tacks landing 10 fish before I even cranked the outboard!

TODAY’S DATE: 25 March 2026 (AM)


NEXT OPEN DATES FOR FISHING: 30 March (AM)

PHOTO CAPTION: Janis and James Connally spent their working lives living all across Texas as James served as a Texas Game Warden, retiring as a Captain, and Janis worked as a physical therapist wherever James’ assignments dictated. Now, those white bass were all about the same size, so why is it that Janis’ fish look so much bigger?!?

FIND LURES HERE: https://whitebasstools.com/


WHERE WE FISHED: Lake Belton


SUMMARY OF HOW WE FISHED:

After an atypical start to our morning, and as the sun rose, the cloud cover kept getting thicker and thicker. This did not bode well for about the first hour after sunrise. We found fish, but they were very tight to the bottom and very reluctant to chase baits. We put a handful of fish (3 exactly3) in the boat, but things did not really start happening until about 8:45 when the clouds thinned enough to fully blanket the sky, but still let enough light through to cause you to squint without sunglasses on.

From that point on, we moved from aggressive group of fish to aggressive group of fish putting a total of 87 additional fish in the boat, and bringing our final tally to exactly 100 fish landed, 100% of which were white bass. The fishing never got slow enough following a good bite to lead me to believe putting live shad down would be a good bet. Instead, once the fish quit hitting our smoked baits, I simply moved to find another group of active fish.

For about an hour’s time from 8:45 AM to 9:45 AM, I had the white, 5/8 ounce Bladed Hazy Eye Slab tied on, but, once the clouds thinned even more (around 9:45) I exchanged those for the MAL Bridge so that what little bit of sun was coming through could be caught by that spinning #3 blade. This turned out to be a good choice, as the fish definitely responded even better to the MAL Bridge than they had been responding to the slab.

Once I made that swap, we stuck with the MAL Bridge for all but our last stop which came in 40 feet of water. For the sake of getting the lure to bottom more quickly, I changed us over to the MAL Dense which is the heaviest MAL Lure of all.

RESULTS: 100 fish, all caught and released

TUTORIAL VIDEO ON HOW “SLOW SMOKE” A BLADED HAZY EYE SLAB VERTICALLY: Click here for tutorial

OBSERVATIONS:
-First prolonged use of the MAL Lure this season in which fish showed a definite preference for it over the slab.

-No bird activity.

LATEST WATER TEMPERATURE PROFILE:

Taken on Lake Belton on 19 March 2026, approx. 7AM…

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