“Keeper Per Kid” and Many More – 129 Fish

CLIENTS: This morning, Veterans’ Day 2026, I fished with a crew of three 12-year-old boys from out near Lampasas. Joining me were Vion Miller, Kaylor Chapa, and Rylan Miles. Mrs. Janda McQueen coordinated everything, dropped them all off at 7 AM and picked them back up at 11 AM.

TODAY’S DATE: 11 November 2026 (AM)


NEXT OPEN MORNING DATES: 17, 24, 30 Nov., 4 Dec. 2026

PHOTO CAPTION: From left: Rylan Miles, Vion Miller, and Kaylor Chapa all were quite excited about the prospect of catching largemouth bass as a bycatch as we targeted white bass today on Lake Belton. Two of them are already involved in competitive fishing at the middle school level. Seeing this, I visited areas where I knew we would catch white bass, but which had some timber mixed in, thus upping our chances at largemouth. That paid off with a “keeper per kid” concerning that species — all on the MAL Dense.

PHOTO CAPTION: From left: Rylan Miles, Vion Miller, and Kaylor Chapa all landed a mess of white bass — 118 in all — as they settled in to good habits, listened to my coaching, and overcame counterproductive habits like setting to hook too aggressively and reeling their hooked fish up too close to the rod tip.

SUMMARY OF HOW WE FISHED:

All three boys had fished with me previously targeting white bass over on Stillhouse earlier this year. So, with just a little bit of refresher training, the boys were off to the races, using their MAL Dense Lures fished vertically, aided by a splashing device and Garmin LiveScope in order to take full advantage of each school of white bass I found using side-imaging this morning.

This was the toughest set of conditions I’ve encountered in a while. We had no cloud cover, bright sun, and no wind. The only saving grace today was that the water is cooling through the white basses’ preferred temperature range, and these fish are feeding for long whiles daily every day, even under conditions that in other seasons would prevent a decent catch.

Although the fish were biting, it was no cakewalk today. I had to move much more frequently, and the fish we encountered were typically getting quite reluctant after the initial surge of interest wore off.

In right at four hours of effort, these three boys landed 129 fish including 6 short hybrid, 4 largemouth bass, 1 drum, and 118 white bass.

One thing that I routinely had to remind the boys about, which I opted to include in this report because I see a lot of people doing this and I believe they all would land more fish if they were mindful about this, is reeling hooked fish up too close to the rod tip.

In order to prevent my clients from reeling, their lure connected to a hook fish all the way to the rod tip, I use a roughly 22-inch long leader, but still, people will reel the swivel which connects that leader to the main line all the way to the tip of the rod, which is still too far. I tried to have my clients leave 2 feet of line between the tip of the rod and the swivel, thus totaling about 4 feet of line from the tip down to the fish. If you are mindful to do this routinely, you will have far fewer fish get off as they are dangling at the end of the line right after they reach the water’s surface from below.

RESULTS: 129 fish, all caught and released

WHERE WE FISHED: Lake Belton

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

SEE THE “SMOKING TACTIC” TUTORIAL HERE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IC3FMEQHOMQ

OBSERVATIONS:

LATEST WATER TEMPERATURE PROFILE:

Taken on Lake Belton on 11 Nov. 2026, approx. 6:15AM…

Taken on Lake Belton on 04 Nov. 2026, approx. 6:10AM…

Area 2711 – 27 fish on smoked MAL Dense Lure