On R&R from Iraq — Belton Lake — 40 Fish — 09 June 2011






This morning I paired up with First Lieutenant Matt H., a recent West Point graduate now serving in harm’s way performing route clearance missions with his combat engineer unit in Iraq. Matt is home on R&R a bit sooner than the typical half-way point of his tour so as to spend his 3rd wedding anniversary in the U.S. with his wife.

Matt holds our two largest hybrid which both struck large gizzard shad live baits just seconds apart. The larger of the two went 5.75 pounds and the other weighed 5.25 pounds. Both were released.

Matt arrived earlier than most folks as he wanted to join me for the “trip before the trip” — netting live bait for pursuit of hybrid striped bass. We put exactly 71 suitable baits in the bait tank in about 15 throws (more throws than have been necessary lately). The pre-dawn breeze prevented spotting shad as they “flicked” on the surface, so, I had to make a lot of blind throws.

As we headed out in pursuit of gamefish, I looked hard along the stretch of lake from Area 388 to Area 726. There has been a good bit of topwater action in this area from white bass feeding on newly hatched shad. The feeding, even on slick water, is light, and with this morning’s wind there was no action to be seen. Regardless, we watched sonar closely and saw schools of fish beginning to form and patrol at 20-25 feet over a 36-40 foot bottom. This was perfect duty for the downriggers. We put on dual White Willow spoons and went to work. Our first two fish came just seconds apart and immediately after we passed over a huge school of fish right on Area 819.

Based on the size of the school and its spread from near surface to near bottom, we stopped and began using jigging spoons on these fish. The active fish and 40 water called for a 3/4 oz. TNT 180. We boated a total of 28 more fish here over the next hour or so as smaller schools of 15-20 fish would intersect our path in the vicinity of Area 819. During this bite, Matt boated his first hybrid ever. By around 8:40 the action was weakening, so, we set out in search of hybrid with our live shad.

We fished mainly around Area 691 in ~25 feet of water both by e-anchoring and by drifting with a sock out. Our first action came as a double header as a nice pair of 5+ pound hybrid struck 2 of the 3 gizzard shad we’d set out. Matt picked up the rod with the largest fish (5.75 pounds) and I moved the other rod with a fish attached to it to the furthest rod holder from Matt to keep it from interfering with his efforts but still allow him to catch it after his first fish was landed. Matt did a great job fighting the fish and landed both successfully — 5.75 pounds and 5.25 pounds.

We would go on to catch one more keeper hybrid here on shad as well as one 15″ largemouth. When the bait bite shut off around 10:30, we spent another 40 minutes downrigging this area adding another 5 white bass to our tally. By now it was around 11:30 and things were getting slow.

We checked a number of additional areas but did not find any more active fish for our efforts. So, we closed out our day with 40 fish even, including 3 nice keeper hybrid and some good memories for Matt to take back to Iraq. Along the way Matt got experience in the methodology for netting, handling, and keeping shad, a hands-on lesson in downrigging (which he got really good at very quickly), and experience with using a smoking technique with slabs and a lift-drop technique for Sandblasters.

Matt and Jennifer, Happy Anniversary! Thanks for coming out with me!

TALLY = 40 FISH, all caught and released


TODAY’S CONDITIONS:

Start Time: 5:30a

End Time: 1:30p

Air Temp: 74F at trip’s start.

Water Surface Temp: ~83.2F

Wind: Winds were S6 at sunrise increasing to S12 by mid-day.

Skies: Skies were hazy at sunrise, turning clear and bright after ~9:00am








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