This morning I fished with long time Central Texas residents Jim Mobley and John Cornelius.
Downrigging for tentative, scattered fish today under north wind conditions produced a few nice hybrid striped bass for Jim Mobley and John Cornelius.
Jim works for a well-respected local accounting firm and John, after retiring from government service, including a stint as a Corps of Engineers Park Ranger at Belton Lake and 25 years as a Fort Hood wildlife biologist, runs his own wildlife management consulting firm. Both were quite well-traveled when it comes to angling, and both have a bent toward flyfishing when conditions are right.
In summary, fishing was very subdued today yielding below average results thanks to a mild front that came in yesterday, turning our winds northerly before sunrise this morning.
We looked intently for some first-light topwater action, but there was none to be found.
We put live baits down on downlines over some decent schools of hybrids and only drew a few strikes, failing to land even a single fish on bait today (which is very telling, in and of itself).
Between 8:50a and 9:50a we landed the majority of our fish for the morning. Our first bit of success came as we ran downriggers at 23-26 feet down over a deeper bottom for hybrid stripers. We used 3 arm umbrella rigs and landed a single limit of 5 keeper hybrid in about 20 minutes’ time on about 4 passes over the same stretch of water. We did try putting bait down, but these open water fish were moving about too much to be interested in what we offered.
Around 9:20a, I got a call from long-time Belton angler Bill Pasko. He spotted me and gave me some “good intel” on some bottom-oriented hybrid he’d found willing to strike artificials, and invited me over to join him.
On our way, we encountered a brief bit of topwater action from a school of white bass mixed with short hybrid. We pulled 4 out of that school before they left the surface, never to return.
When we joined Bill, he had been pulling fish steadily from the area, so I duplicated his efforts and both Jim and John got to hook up on a few more legal hybrid at this area before the whole bite shut down as the winds went calm, the clouds began to clear, and the heat really started pouring it on in the humidity left in the wake of yesterday’s storms.
We put only 2 more fish in the boat after that, both on downriggers, and called it a day with 16 fish boated for our efforts.
TALLY = 16 FISH
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TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:
Start Time: 6:15am
End Time: 10:30am
Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 71F (rain cooled from previous day)
Water Surface Temp: 82.1F
Wind Speed & Direction: N5-7
Sky Conditions: 30% until clearing around 10am
Other: GT=0
AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:
**Area 307-506 – hybrids on downriggers
**Area 499/181 – brief topwater
**Area 1411 – bottom-oriented schooled hybrid
Bob Maindelle
Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service
254.368.7411 (call or text)
Salado, TX
www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com