Belton Lake Fishing Guide Report – 05 October 2009 – 21 Fish (AM Trip)






I fished a morning trip today with father and son team Ed and Blake K. Ed is visiting from Metarie, LA, and Blake resides in Pfluegerville.

Blake and I suspect that Big Ed brought the “gris-gris” down to Texas with him — not good!


Honestly, this is the longest stretch of poor fishing weather I’ve encountered in a long time. Yet again today we had NNE winds and an occluded front with low pressure sitting on us making the fishing very, very tough.


Start Time: 7:00a

End Time: 12:35p

Air Temp: 69F at trip’s start.

Water Surface Temp: ~76.5F

Wind: Winds were NNE at 6-7, turning ENE by trip’s end.

Skies: Skies were heavily overcast and grey for the duration of the trip today.

We got on the water pre-sunrise and headed to between Areas 171 and 165. We had some fair success on white bass taken on cast blade baits in 14 feet of water and less fished lift-drop style. These fish were scattered and sluggish and came one or two at a time. We picked up total of 18 fish here by 9:40, including 17 white bass (14 legal) and a short hybrid.

Once our casting success played out, we stuck in this area and ran downriggers over the same shallower areas, and out to 26 feet as we saw gamefish and shad. This yielded only an additional short hybrid and another legal white bass.

Since we were still seeing fair sonar returns for bait and gamefish, we gave drifting with live shad a try. We had 3 strikes, all resulting in tail-stripped baits — a sure sign of small white bass just worrying the large gizzard shad baits.

We moved on and spot-hopped a number of areas, catching only 1 short largemouth on a downrigger beyond 10:15 am. The spots we checked included from 365 all the way around to 508 (we saw bait at 35-40 feet the entire time but without gamefish mixed in), Area 84, 187, 152, and 344. At these areas we tried a combination of downrigging and vertical jigging to no avail.

If it weren’t for Ed’s good stories about the good old days of fishing in the Gulf near New Orleans, today would have been tough to swallow.

TALLY = 21 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








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