This morning, Nov. 3rd, I was joined by father and son team Brian and Trevor M. of Cedar Park.
Brian and Trevor with our best fish of the trip, a 19.25 inch hybrid that fell for a Pet Spoon fished down in 40+ feet of water.
The last time these fellows came out with me was back in June of 2011 on Stillhouse. Today, we gave Belton Lake a try as it typically fishes a bit more consistently during this portion of the autumn.
Our conditions were less than ideal today with a persistent morning fog that didn’t burn off until around 9:30, thus keeping the conditions murky and “low light”. I find, especially on Belton, that the sudden brightening of the skies just prior to sunrise is a real feeding trigger for white bass and hybrid, and on low light days the bite tends to ramp up very slowly with topwater action virtually unheard of on such days.
Regardless, we took the conditions in stride and methodically worked through them to put together a respectable catch by morning’s end.
We began our day downrigging over a “circuit” for suspended fish showing clearly on sonar 19-24 feet down between Areas 473 and 1079. We ran two sets of Pet Spoons on tandem rigs behind the down riggers and put 11 fish in the boat before this early bite died.
We then went hunting with sonar, this time finding abundant bait unusually deep — between 45 and 50 feet. Where shoals of bait were found, gamefish were also present, but still not “jazzed” and hitting all that well as long as the fog remained and the calm winds prevailed. We did best at Area 682, both combing it over with downriggers to confirm the presence of active fish, then working these active fish over with TNT180 slabs. We added 12 fish to our tally at this location, including 3 hybrid stripers, the best of which went 19.25 inches and weighed in at 3 3/16 pounds. It was interesting to note that all 3 of these hybrids hit immediately after the fog lifted and the direct sun began to shine on the water for the first time this day.
After we caught all that Area 682 would give up, we continued hunting with sonar and found one last concentration of fish at Area 294/1012. Given the way these fish presented on sonar (up off bottom by 18+ inches versus belly-to-the-bottom as we had encountered elsewhere), we skipped the downrigging and went right to slabbing for these fish. We used a “smoking” tactic to put a final 10 fish in the boat including 8 white bass, 1 largemouth and 1 hybrid striped bass. By the time these fish slacked off around 11:05, the fishing was over for the morning.
We finished up our trip with exactly 33 fish boated.
Once we arrived back at the dock, we worked on some Boy Scout fishing merit badge tasks for Trevor, including some knot tying and presentation of certain artificial and natural baits.
TALLY = 33 FISH, (4 hybrid stripers, 1 largemouth, 28 white bass)
TODAY’S CONDITIONS:
Start Time: 7:15a
End Time: 11:20a
Air Temp: 68F at trip’s start.
Water Surface Temp: 70.5F
Wind: SSE at 2-5
Skies: Skies were fogged over until 9:30, then cleared to partly cloudy, 30%.