I fished a half-day morning trip with returning guest Ryan S. of Temple, this time accompanied by his dad who hails from Austin. Ryan is headed towards his 3rd year of residency at Scott and White so his time off is limited. I was very pleased to be able to put Ryan and his dad on fish in an exceptional way today since we’ve been comparing our calendars since February trying to find a time agreeable for everyone.

Ryan with a nice 2.75 pound Belton Lake smallmouth bass which leaped about 4 feet out of the water during the fight right at boatside.

Not to be outdone, Dad got a hard-charging 22.5 inch, 5.00 pound hybrid on downlined gizzard shad.

Start Time: 6:45a

End Time: 1:00p

Air Temp: 57F at trip’s start.

Water Surface Temp: ~68.0F

Wind: Winds were due W starting off at ~9, then steadily increasing to a steady ~22mph by noon. This wind cleared out the humid funk and E. wind of the past 2-3 days.

Skies: Skies were clearing this morning from an overnight round of rough weather in which severe T’storm and tornado warning were posted for the local area. We got 1/2″ of rain in several brief downpours as various waves of weather came in last night.

Fishing was very good today thanks to a clearing W. wind on the heels of 3 days of damp E. wind and turbulent conditions last night — the fish were ready to feed hard.

We fished only two areas this morning. First, we hit a stretch of water from Area 380 to Area 617 in 24-30 feet of water. We arrived just as the sun was clearing a low cloud deck in the E. We all let our 3/8 oz. TNT 180’s down to bottom and began jigging. I was into a fish right off the bat and was talking the men through how to adjust their depth and work the slab effectively when we saw a few fish began to pop shad on the surface. At first there was one or two here and there, but before long fish were seemingly everywhere. We switched over to bladebaits (3/8 oz. Cicadas — get ’em at Salado Creek Outfitters) and the boys worked these very effectively and we began sacking up the fish in a big way. We cast to visible fish and immediately began retrieving when possible, otherwise we’d throw to recent boils and countdown to 3 or 4, or blindcast if topwater wasn’t evident and countdown to 10-14. We caught fish non-stop right up until ~11:05. Occasionally we slabbed, but the truly active fish were all suspended, so, when we encountered large congregations of fish on sonar directly beneath the boat, we smoked them for variety’s sake with the slabs and then switched back to the blades when they thinned out. We caught exactly 141 fish before we left this area after the bite died completely. About 1 in every 6 fish was a short hybrid, otherwise all others, save one drum, were white bass ranging from 5 to 14 inches with no real consistency to the size. At one point I put on 3/4 oz. TNT’s to work lift-drop style across the bottom trying to select for larger fish, but we saw no appreciable impact from that bait change.

At 11:15a we headed out and checked a number of areas to try to put a little icing on the cake. At ~11:40, we hit Area 618 (as few other areas could be worked with live bait due to the heavy wave action and strong winds). Here, an underwater spine tops out in 24-26 feet. As I motored around, I saw both bait and gamefish, so we anchored and went to work. With live shad fished on downlines, we picked up 4 nice fish in the first hour, then things went quiet. The fish we boated included a 5.00 pound hybrid, a 2.75 pound smallmouth, a nice blue cat, and another barely keeper smallmouth.

At ~12:40 another angler moved in much too close with his outboard running, and then proceeded to make 3 failed attempts at anchoring parallel to us less than a cast length away. Whether he realized it or not, dragging an anchor is a surefire way to shutdown a bite, and he succeeded at doing just that. By 1:00p we were headed to the dock having seen both quality and quantity on this rare weather day.

TALLY = 145 FISH, all caught and released