Whoa! Who left the refrigerator door open?! We had a dramatic drop in temperature overnight following the arrival of a hard, dry cold front which came in yesterday around 1pm. Yesterday’s highs were in the 70’s. This morning it was 37F with a wind chill from the 25+ mph wind still blowing.

Geovanni, Kevin, and Breana fought the fish and the cold on this day following a cold front’s arrival.

Start Time: 7:05a


End Time: 11:20a


Air Temp: 37F at trip’s start, and warming to only 54 in the afternoon.


Water Surface Temp: ~59-61F

Wind: High winds continued from the overnite hours and were 20+ at sunrise building to sustained speeds of 30+ with gusts near 40 by noon.

Skies: Skies were clear and bright.

I fished a half-day morning trip today with Army Major Geovanni R., his son, Kevin, age 14, and his little daughter Breana, aged 4. This trip was in celebration of Kevin’s 14th birthday. I offered to change our date or just cancel the trip due to the conditions, but these folks were real troopers. Geovanni has some mandatory military travel coming up and didn’t want to let Kevin down, so we went for it.

We began the day just getting a feel for what, if anything the fish were going to do today by flatline trolling prior to sunrise in 8-13 feet. I saw very little going on in the shallows (not surprisingly), so we headed for mid-depths.

We checked out Areas 103 and 108 with downriggers deployed and came up with 3 fish really quickly just after sunrise at 7:30a. As we caught that 3rd fish, the sonar revealed a fair congregation of bottom huggers. Down went the buoy and slabs and up came 23 white bass in about an hour and a quarter. To their credit, Geovanni and Kevin very quickly got the hang of adjusting their slabs correctly relative to the bottom despite the boat control challenge presented by the 20-25 mph wind, and they were rewarded for that with consistent action, and a fair number of doubles in their take.

After the jigging action died down, we continued to look with sonar on and ‘riggers down in this general area, and came up with 2 more white bass for the effort. All of today’s white bass on the ‘riggers came on the White Willow spoon.

By now it was around 10:30a, the wind was steadily increasing and was now blowing 25-30 with higher gusts. We tucked in behind some topography to protect ourselves, but even that wasn’t going to be enough very much longer. We tried one drift with live bait with a drift sock out and never got looked at, but also never saw fish on sonar over the duration of that drift.

We decided to wrap things up with a bit of flatline trolling. The circuit from Area 407 to Area 116 was a solid bet. We hooked one white immediately and lost another bringing our tally to 29 fish on the day. We couldn’t stop on an odd number like that, so we kept plying the waters and in short order came up with a short largemouth which the boys let Breana reel in for nice windy day catch of 30 fish even.

This is the greatest number of fish father and son had ever enjoyed catching on a single trip, and neither had ever caught a white bass before.

As we shook hands and departed, we agreed to give this a try again when the weather was a little better.

TALLY = 30 FISH, all caught and released

Bob Maindelle, Owner, Holding The Line Guide Service and Kids Fish, Too! Stillhouse Hollow Fishing Guide, Belton Lake Fishing Guide, Lake Georgetown Fishing Guide, Walter E. Long (Decker) Lake Fishing Guide. Offering Salado Fishing, Killeen Fishing and Ft. Hood Fishing