Fished a 1/2 day evening “Kids Fish, Too!” trip with Jaylen G. of Killeen this evening. Jaylen is a very bright, studious, articulate 4th Grader and he can work a mean slab spoon, too!!

JAYLEN WITH THE BEST TWO WHITES OF THE 79 WE CAUGHT.

Start Time: 5:00p


End Time: 8:10p


Air Temp: 69F at trip’s start.


Water Surface Temp: ~63F

Wind: Winds were tapering off from the WNW at about 14 mph down to 3 past sunset.

Skies: Skies were fair with scattered high clouds.

Environmental Note: Saw the first 2 flocks of cowbirds for the season traveling the lake this evening, and this coincided with the first observation I’ve made of sustained topwater white bass feeding.

Fishing was easy tonight … we went to two locations and caught fish at both of them without much fanfare at all.

Our first stop came to the SE of Area 410 around 5:15 after watching sonar and not fishing several areas due to a lack of fish, bait, or both. The wind was blowing into this breakline and bottom-hugging fish were present on the feature. A straight-forward slabbing technique netted us 8 white bass and a short largemouth over a 70 minute span.

We left here after that light action tapered off, and I searched a good 3/8 of a mile of river channel without seeing much at all on sonar.

By 7:00p I wanted to be up shallower, and so headed over and checked out Area 418 and downwind to the SE of it by ~50 yards. As I motored in, sonar just lit up with fish littering the bottom and I knew this was going to be good. I encouraged Jaylen to really concentrate on doing all the basics right so we didn’t start catching fish and then break our momentum with a tangle, a lure caught in clothing, etc., etc. He really did very well and nearly matched me fish for fish. We caught exactly 70 fish from this general area in an hour’s time. We started in 20 feet with straight vertical jigging, then drifted back into 16 feet, still catching them vertical jigging, and adding a lift-drop technique with a slab to Jaylen’s repertoire. I then put on a blade bait while he was doing well on the lift-dropped slab. When Jaylen wanted to experiment with a bladebait, I went with topwater and caught the first topwater whites of the year from Stillhouse (#2 Polished Chicken Rig). Once sunset was past and it got dark, the only active fish were the ones just 7-8 feet down from the surface. I used a subsurface bladebait to milk the final 5 fish out of the area. By 8:10p, that was all she wrote.

TALLY = 79 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