Ashton Woods Homes Corporate Trip — 18 Fish, Belton Lake, 09 July 2013






This morning I fished Belton Lake as one boat of several taking out the crew of Ashton Woods Homes, based in Austin.


Cody scored on the hybrid early. This fish went 19.75 inches and was the first shad-caught fish of this morning’s trip.


Spencer brought in this nice 17+ inch blue cat which earned him $100 for the “ugliest fish” prize.



Gerald had a “thing” going with the white bass today. Every time he came up in the rotation, a white bass was attached to his line. He, too, earned a $100 prize for smallest fish for a 9+ incher we took early on the downriggers. This legal white bass shown in the photo was our last white bass of the trip taken just minutes before coming off the water.

I was joined by Cody, Spencer, and Gerald. We got going around 6:30 and fished for five hours. The bite was really sluggish today. Our boat posted the second highest catch of just 18 fish.

The fish we caught came off of two distinct areas. We found fish with the downriggers and then put live bait down over the fish we’d found at Area 214. We picked up 2 hybrid, 3 blue cat, and 1 white bass here.

After that action dissipated, we spent a good while searching for our next fishable concentration of fish. We finally found building action at Area 1106, again finding fish with the downriggers, then attempting to exploit the find with bait; only this time the bait didn’t do the trick. So, we “danced with who brung us” and returned to the downriggers. The ‘riggers yielded 10 more fish for us including 4 more hybrid, 1 largemouth bass, and 5 white bass. To underscore the negative mood the fish seemed to be in, there were several times when we had twin ‘riggers down and well-placed and brought the balls through large, suspended schools of white bass and occasional smaller wolfpacks of hybrid. Under normal conditions I would have bet money that we’d have drawn a strike when seeing that combination of factors on sonar, but today, maybe 1 in 6 or 8 times would that happen. Further, we noted the absence of topwater action for any sustained length of time. Over the course of the 5 hours on the water we saw about 5 schools of white bass and 1 school of hybrid erupt on the surface, each staying there less than 10 seconds.

Things actually played out well for Spencer and Gerald by trip’s end. As we all gathered to compare notes and results, Spencer won a $100 prize for “ugliest fish” with a 17+ inch blue cat he put in the boat, and Gerald also won a $100 prize for smallest fish with his (documented!) 9″ white bass (our first fish caught this morning).

The Ashton Woods folks surely did not get a good taste of the great hybrid fishery Belton has to offer. All but one of Belton Lake’s full-time guides were participating in this event and we all struggled for what we did put in the boat.


TALLY = 18 FISH, all caught and released

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS:

Start Time: 6:30a

End Time: 11:30a

Air Temp: 80F at trip’s start.

Water Surface Temp: 84F

Wind: Winds were SSE under 8mph the entire trip.

Skies: Fair and 30% cloudy.

Bob Maindelle

Holding the Line Guide Service

254-368-7411

www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

Salado, Texas








Fishin’ on the Fourth of July — 82 Fish, Austin Fishing Guide Report for Stillhouse Hollow






This morning I fished with “Grandpa” George D. of Waxahachie, TX, and his two grandsons, 13 year old Jonathan, and 11 year old Joshua, from Katy, TX.

Jonathan with two of our four best fish of the trip.


And Joshua with the other half of our best four fish of the day.

The boys were well-behaved kids, eager to learn, and ready to fish. We got on our first area and had our first rod bent just minutes into the trip and never went but a few minutes without catching a fish for the remainder of our time on the water.

Fishing could really not have been much easier today. We enjoyed the return of a SSW wind today with continuing high pressure and bearable temperatures. The consistent high pressure makes for “cookie cutter” days where the fish do the same thing in the same locations and at the same times nearly every day until a wrinkle in the weather changes their routine.

Here’s how it played out this morning … first, we downrigged as we waited for the skies to brighten and the fish to get active (Area 458/459/909), then, once we began to see fish chase bait to the surface, we got in the “center of mass” and used a combination of horizontal and vertical techniques with slabs and bladebaits to capitalize on the find (vicinity of Area 484/485 and south of Area 1233). After that morning peak of activity had passed, we downrigged (Areas 1231-1222) to comb out the still active fish while every once in a while stopping to “smoke” our slabs through a tightly schooled bunch of white bass holding on or near bottom.

Along the way we picked up several doubles on the tandem rigged Pet Spoons we used for downrigging. Noticeably absent from our catch today were any largemouth bass. Largemouth have been making up ~10% of our catch over the entire month of June, but today, not a single one was hooked or landed. We boated exactly 80 white bass and 2 freshwater drum.

Over the course of our time together, George, a small group leader at his church, and I got to talk in between fish about group life, church history, and modern Christian authors (his favorites are John MacArthur and John Piper).

By 10:30 the Fourth of July “crazies” had begun to show up — jet skis, ski boats, pontoons everywhere, so it was time for we on the “early shift” to head on out.


TALLY = 82 FISH, all caught and released

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS:

Start Time: 6:20a

End Time: 10:45a

Air Temp: 72F at trip’s start.

Water Surface Temp: 83.1F

Wind: Winds were SSW7-8 the entire trip.

Skies: Fair.

Bob Maindelle

Holding the Line Guide Service

254-368-7411

www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

Salado, Texas








Longjohns in July??? — 77 Fish on SKIFF Trip #9 of 2013






This morning I fished with 15 year old Kayla Marquez and her 8 year old brother, Zach, on Stillhouse Hollow. This was a “SKIFF” (Soldiers’ Kids Involved in Fishing Fun) trip — the 9th one of 2013 — all sponsored by the Austin Fly Fishers.


Downrigging accounted for about half of our fish this morning, with the other half split between jigging slabs and casting bladebaits.

Zach landed our trip lunker today, this largemouth weighed in at 1 7/8 pounds.


Kayla and Zach are the children of U.S. Army Reserve Sergeant First Class (SFC) Abe Marquez and his wife, Hilary. SFC Marquez has served overseas on 4 previous deployments and is now providing security at the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan. SFC Marquez is currently assigned to the 479th Field Artillery Brigade.

Fishing was easy today, and so pleasant!! A rare mid-summer cool front pushed through over the weekend, shifting our winds to the north and dropping the overnight temps into the mid- to high-60’s and daytime highs in the high 80’s and low 90’s, nearly 15 degrees off last week’s highs. No, not exactly longjohn weather, but a far cry from what it could be in early July in Texas.

With an 8 year old on board, I went for the “instant gratification” approach by downrigging for white bass right off the bat, helping Zach connect with a multi-species “double” in the first minutes of the trip in the vicinity of Area 250/251/1230). As his downrigger went off, Zach brought in a white bass and a largemouth bass on a pair of Pet Spoons. We continued downrigging this area until the bite died, boating a total of 38 fish before we moved on, including both white bass and largemouth.

Our next success came at Area 1112. There, in about 34 feet of water, we came across a large (200-300 fish) school of white bass holding right on a breakline. I got us into a hover using the i-Pilot feature on my trolling motor, and we vertically jigged for these fish using a “smoking” tactic. We caught exactly 20 more white bass here in less than 45 minutes before the school dissipated.

Zach really liked the downrigging, and Kayla much preferred the jigging, so, I tried to do a good blend of both. After 45 minutes of jigging, no matter how productive it was, Zach was ready for some more downrigging. Also, as we first got going this morning, I showed both kids how to cast, yet, up to this point we really hadn’t done much casting as the topwater action was subdued due to the speed and direction of the wind.

We headed to Area 458 where I felt confident we could pick up a few more fish on the downriggers before calling it a day. As we closed in on the “spot on the spot”, we picked up 3 fish on the downriggers, including another double for Zach. When we hit the 28 foot mark (having started out over 40+ feet of water), the sonar just lit up. There was a thick school of white bass in here that carpeted the bottom for 15 yards and which was 3-4 feet “thick” along the bottom. I put the brakes on, hauled in the downrigging gear, hovered over these fish with the trolling motor, and proceeded to put the kids into a final 16 fish taken by casting and working bladebaits horizontally along the bottom. The potential was there for much more, but, this was both kids’ first experience casting spinning gear under “real life” conditions, so the normal errant casts, tangles, and the like reduced that potential a bit, but, the bottom line was that both kids were successful in this new thing they tried.

We ended up the trip with 77 fish today consisting entirely of white bass and largemouth bass.

The members of the Austin Fly Fishers (and other individuals) raise the funds and donate time and money to make these trips available at no charge to the families receiving them. Thank you all!! And, I’d like to say a special “Thank You” to Amanda T. at Minn Kota headquarters. She really helped us out by providing our SKIFF boat with a state of the art battery recharging system (an MK460PC) to replace the MK345 that gave up the ghost outside its warranty period. She and Joe B. over there have been good to SKIFF in a lot of ways since 2009 when we first got going. Thanks, guys!!


TALLY = 77 FISH, all caught and released

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS:

Start Time: 6:30a

End Time: 10:40a

Air Temp: 66F at trip’s start.

Water Surface Temp: 82.3F

Wind: Winds were NNE5-7 the entire trip.

Skies: Clear.

Bob Maindelle

Holding the Line Guide Service

254-368-7411

www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

Salado, Texas