Belton Lake Fishing Guide Report – 03 April 2010 – 88 FISH






I fished a full day on Belton today, scouting in the morning, and fishing a “Kids Fish, Too!” trip with a young man who just turned 10 from Gatesville in the evening. I met Dalton’s dad, David, at the recent Bell Co. Expo Center Boat Show in January. He and his wife got their son a fishing gift certificate for his birthday, and, after comparing notes for a few weeks to make sure the weather and the fishing was going to work for 2 ten year olds, I finally got Dalton and his buddy, Gage, on the water.


Dalton is all grins with his slab crappie taken on a Rip Shad 200


Dalton and Gage double teamed the whites tonight boating 26 fish in about 2 hours of activity near sunset

Start Time: 7:00a

End Time: 7:50p

Air Temp: 47F at trip’s start.

Water Surface Temp: ~62-64F.

Wind: Winds were light from the WNW following the passage of a front last night, then slowly turned around from the S. with some haze building to the point of obscuring the sunset by day’s end.

Skies: Skies were clear all morning, then began to get overcast with the arrival of winds from the S. after noon.

I started off fishing a slow troll with flatlines at Area 409 and picked up a single white bass right off the bat, but found no consistency here and moved on up the shore to the north without getting a single strike.

After glassing for a few seconds, I spotted some bird activity in the area triangulated by Areas 609, 610, and 611. White bass and hybrid stripers were herding shad to the surface and feeding heavily. Threadfin shad upwards of 5 inches were regularly leaping out of the water to get away from the gamefish below. As the fish were breaking on the surface, I threw a Spook Jr. and hooked up every time (once even catching 2 fish on the lure at the same time). After they disappeared from the surface, I’d count down a blade to the depth I saw them on sonar and then steadily retrieved for very consistent action. Once the large schools of fish moved on, I set out a flatline troll with Rip Shads until some more surface action provided clues to fish location, and the whole cycle started again. Over 3 hours I put 62 fish in the boat including 2 keeper hybrid and by far the single best bag of whites I’ve ever caught on Belton, with most fish going 13 inches, and 2 exceeding 15 inches (just fractions of an inch shy of the lake record). As the W wind turned S, the action began to die, and by 11:30, all was done.

I moved on down to Area 608 and 612 for the evening trip. I picked up Dalton, David, and Gage around 3:30p, and we really struggled until 5:30p.

From 5:30p to sunset, we experienced slowly improving action picking white bass out of the top 6-11 feet of the water column by flatline trolling for them.

For a very brief spell around 7:15p, a small push of white bass came up shallow and forced some shad against the bank. The boys cast fast and furious and immediately began reeling their bladebaits back in to target these fish just inches under the water’s surface. After that flurry died, we resumed trolling until all went quiet around 7:50.

By this time the boys had put a total of 26 fish in the boat including 24 white bass and 2 crappie.

TALLY = 88 FISH, all caught and released