This morning I fished on Belton Lake with long-time friends Mike Hoock of Morgan’s Point, TX, and Harold Snipes, who calls the road his home, and has ever since retiring (the second time).  Harold continuously tours the nation in his motorhome.

Mike put the steel to this largemouth that raced off bottom over 20′ to nab his 3/4 oz. slab.

Harold shows one of the several white bass & hybrid we caught today — mostly scattered and lethargic.

Mike and Harold first met while serving in the same organization caller S.O.W.E.R. which stand for Servants On Wheels Ever-Ready.  This is a non-denominational, non-profit, evangelical organization of RV-owners who go where help is needed to repair, replace, remodel, refurbish, and do anything else that needs doing at churches, camps, conference grounds, orphanages, schools, colleges, missionary retreat centers, missionary training facilities, refuges for neglected or abused children, recovery homes for adults, and the like.

I have to say the company I had today was much better than the fishing.  Despite extending our time on the water and fishing essentially a trip-and-a-half, we still just didn’t pull a whole lot of fish over the side today.  The fish were very deep, very scattered, and generally turned off.  We really just kind of pecked at them today, finding fish on sonar, buoying them, catching 1 or 2, only to have any schoolmates that may have shown themselves on sonar just drift off without engaging.

I heard from a fellow guide who was using live bait that he encountered essentially the same thing.

By the time we’d put in 6 hours on the water, we finished up with just 17 fish today including 1 largemouth bass, 1 blue cat, 3 white bass, and 12 hybrid striped bass.

TALLY = 17 FISH, all caught and released

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 7:15a

End Time:  1:15p

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start:  42F

Water Surface Temp:  57.8-58.4F

Wind Speed & Direction:  S8 at sunrise until around 10:30, then shifting sharply to SW13-15.

Sky Conditions: 60-70% clouds.

Other: GT=0

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area   1467 – a few loosely grouped fish

**Area  1488 – a few loosely grouped fish

**Area 1341 – a few loosely grouped fish

**Area 1374 – a few loosely grouped fish

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

This morning I fished on Belton Lake with Israel Garcia and his wife, Mari.  I normally wouldn’t fish on Thanksgiving, but, this couple seemed really nice and, when weather forced a postponement of our originally scheduled date last Saturday due to rain, we agreed to make a second attempt today.

Mari Garcia with a nice fish jigged up from 44 feet of water.

Israel Garcia with a twin to his wife’s fish caught just minutes after hers came over the side.

Both Israel and Mari, who have been married for 7 years now, work full time jobs, so their options for fishing are limited to weekends and holidays.  Given that the water temperatures have fallen into the high 50’s now, I didn’t want to take a chance on one or more major cold fronts pushing temperatures down further, so we got out as soon as we could.

Israel was as interested in understanding why we were pursuing fish as we did as he was in catching fish.  If you’ve fished with me, you know I enjoy coaching/teaching, so, as opportunities allowed, I was sure to point out all I could to Israel today and answer all of his questions the best I could.

Despite fairly light NE winds that nearly diminished in our last 90 minutes on the water, we did pretty well, although much of our catch consisted of smaller fish today.

The approach was, without exception, the same at all 5 areas where we contacted fish.  First, I ran sonar very thoroughly over suspected fish-holding terrain, buoyed fish when we found them, hovered over them using i-Pilot technology, and then tried to lure fish in from a distance using a flashy “smoking” technique.  Typically, the most active fish would respond within a few minutes allowing us to catch several fish quickly, then, we “mopped up” on the more lethargic fish using a vertical jigging tactic.  We used Redneck Fish’n Jigs model 180 slabs in silver/white and silver/chartreuse interchangeably today.

I smiled when Mari commented to the effect that, by the time our 20th fish came over the side, she and Israel had already caught on this morning’s trip more fish than they had in all of their previous fishing trips combined.

When all was said and done, we boated 39 fish today including a mix of hybrid striped bass and white bass.

TALLY = 39 FISH, all caught and released

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 7:15a

End Time:  11:50a

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start:  39F

Water Surface Temp:  58.7F

Wind Speed & Direction:  NNE11 at sunrise and through 10:20a, then shifting to the NE and dropping off to 5-6mph

Sky Conditions: Cloudless bluebird sky.

Other: GT=0

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area   1469 early with 2 spot hops

**Area  1486 thru 1485 mid-morning with 2 spot hops

**Area 1491 late

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

This morning I fished on Belton Lake with Steve Niemeier of Temple, TX, his grandson, Caleb Fowler, and his great nephew, Tevin Gilmore.

Caleb Fowler with a deepwater smallmouth bass taken after noon today.

Tevin Gilmore with a deepwater largemouth bass taken just minutes after we boated Caleb’s smallie.

“The Team” worked together for a 30+ fish day resulting in cheeseburgers, fries, and shakes for all.

Long story short, I expected a better day than we had this morning.  Although the winds got off to a sluggish start, once they picked up, they came from a typically productive direction (SW, W, and WNW) and at a manageable speed (12-15mph), but the fish just never really turned on real strong for us today.  I noted that the few other anglers out chasing whites and hybrids were moving from place to place frequently, as well, indicating they were struggling, as well.

We caught no fish before the winds began.  As soon as a SW breeze picked up, the bite began, allowing us 2 fish at Area 1490.  After the wind had worked on the water for about 20 minutes, I moved us to what I felt, based on the past few trips’ results, would be the most productive area.  We found biting fish here at Area 1485/1487 in ~45 feet of water,  and caught 16 fish, but once the bite died after about 30 minutes, we could not find solid fish or bait elsewhere for quite some time.

Around 10:35-10:55am, I spotted 2 gulls and a flock of cormorants flying, 6 deer feeding, and a few crows moving about, all of which is unusual for this late in the morning.  I felt that perhaps a feeding window was about to open, so, we stuck with our pursuit, and, finally, around noon, got into another school of fish.  This time, we encountered a mixed bag of white bass, short hybrid stripers, largemouth and smallmouth all bunched up together in 49 feet of water at Area 1491.

As often happens on a late morning bite, these fish got excited for a while, but then turned off fairly quickly and the bite died.

To keep the boys engaged, Steve opened the bidding this morning offering a cheeseburger at a restaurant of the winner’s choice to whichever boy caught the first fish.  Once that milestone had been surpassed, the boys took it upon themselves to up the ante.  Caleb chimed in first, making a new “rule” that whoever got to 10 first would get fries, then Tevin voted to change that to a shake, and so it went.  Wisely, Steve, by executive order (those are popular lately), declared that if the “team” got to 30, the “team” would go get cheeseburgers, fries, and shakes.   Now, we were competing against the fish and not one another.

We stayed hard on it until we had cleared the 30 mark by 2 and then called it a day having had to work for each of the fish we caught this morning.

TALLY = 32 FISH, all caught and released

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 7:15a

End Time:  12:30p

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start:  39F

Water Surface Temp:  59.8F

Wind Speed & Direction:  SE3-4 at sunrise, turning quickly from the SSW and ramping up to 11mph by 8:30a, then shifting steadily through the W to NW at 13-15 by trip’s end

Sky Conditions: Cloudless bluebird sky.

Other: GT=55

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area   1489 early

**Area  1383 mid-morning

**Area 1487 mid-morning

**Area 1488 late

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

This morning, 21 Nov., I welcomed aboard Anthony Vaughters of Killeen, and his mother and brother, Velvet and Karon Vaughters, both of Connecticut. Velvet and Karon are visiting for the Thanksgiving holidays.

Anthony landed our largest fish of the trip this morning, a nice 21″, 4.00 pound hybrid.  That’s his proud mama, Velvet, looking on.

Karon got the hang of smoking early and steadily caught fish throughout our trip this morning.  This was the second of our two legal hybrid, going right at 19″.

Anthony is the owner of Kids’ X-pression Child Care in Killeen, near Killeen High School.  I first met him early this past summer when his girlfriend bought him a fishing gift certificate because, according to her,  “he works all the time and needs a break”.  We had a good day catching hybrid on live shad at that time.  Karon had never fished from a boat before, and Velvet was just along for the ride and did not fish, so, we had 2 rods going, plus my own rod on occasion.

Now that the water has cooled, the fish are much deeper and vertical jigging is the ticket.  Unfortunately, we were greeted this morning with a thick fog — so thick in fact that I pushed our launch time back 30 minutes.  Foggy conditions don’t allow for a “normal” sunrise and brightening of the sky and deep water, and generally puts a damper on the fishing.

A number of times today we searched for and found fish, only to catch just a few out of the much larger schools of fish they came from.  Usually, once the most active fish are caught with a smoking retrieve, we can “mop up” with a standard vertical jigging tactic, but even that was not well accepted by the fish today.

So, we simply worked hard, covered ground, and slowly but surely put together a decent catch of 39 fish, including 2 nice hybrid of legal size and many more “short” hybrid and white bass.  The fish we caught were primarily the minority of fish that were willing to give chase to our slabs presented in a “smoking” style from amongst a generally disinterested majority.  I noted that the Redneck Fish’n Jigs 180 in silver halo and white did a bit better than the all-silver halo color today.

It was interesting to note that none of our fish regurgitated shad and that the two legal hybrid we boated both had concave bellies, indicating the fish population has not fed heavily very recently.

A little inside joke:  If you ever see Mrs. Velvet, just ask her about “jiggly” — you’ll be sure to get a smile!

TALLY = 39 FISH, all caught and released

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 7:45a

End Time:  1:00p

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start:  61F

Water Surface Temp:  60F

Wind Speed & Direction:  SE7-10

Sky Conditions: 100% clouded, grey skies with fog for first 2 hours

Other: GT=30;

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area   1290/1325 early

**Area  1485-1486 all along this breakline from when the fog lifted to trip’s end

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

Salado, TX

www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

This morning I fished with Dr. John Updike of Austin on Decker Lake (a.k.a. Walter E. Long Reservoir).

In the face of the season’s strongest cold front to date, John still managed to put 4 nice hybrid stripers in the boat.  These fish were suspended at around 20′ beneath large schools of small shad suspended at 15-20 feet.

Amongst the shad and hybrid, this largemouth also decided to join in for an easy meal of small baitfish.

John contacted me by phone about a week and a half ago.  He retired from a career in dentistry back in January and now wants to devote some time to fishing.  Because Decker Lake is a convenient drive for him, we wanted to get a good overview on what it takes to catch white bass and hybrid stripers in that body of water.  He emphasized that the learning, not the catching, was most important to him.  If we landed a few fish, he’d consider that “icing on the cake”.

With this in mind, I came prepared to demonstrate, if not employ, the five most common tactics I use throughout the year in pursuit of these two members of the the temperate bass family:  live shad, downrigging, vertical jigging, smoking, and the use of blade baits.  I also planned to provide clear guidance on the use and interpretation of sonar.

I had really hoped to catch the tail end of the west wind before it ramped up and transitioned to NNW, as that can offer some of the best fishing in this fall season.  The NOAA forecast actually showed we might have 2.5-3 hours worth of a chance at this as of the 3:00am forecast, but, no sooner did we launch and begin heading to our first area, then the wind shifted suddenly, almost violently, to the NNW and the temperature immediately begin to drop.  Our job just got much, much tougher.

We started off by throwing bladebaits in 15-20 feet of water after marking a single school of white bass, but, by the time we got positioned, they moved on.  We then tried live shad for about 30 minutes near this same area after marking fish on sonar holding at the base of a drop.  This did not produce, either.  Then, after observing 2 gulls working over open water over one of the cove mouths, we employed the downriggers to allow us to cover some water and see if these gulls were on to something.  This, too, failed to produce.

I left this area behind and headed out to check a deep-water area between two main lake points.  As we neared the area I hoped to search, I saw several swirls of feeding fish in the very heavy waves now on the water, and suspected these were white bass or short hybrids.  As I slowed down to inspect, sonar revealed heavy concentrations of small shad “balled up” about 15-20 feet beneath the surface, and, on occasion, beneath these balls, were the unmistakable sonar signatures of hybrid striped bass.  “Balled up” shad are in a defensive posture and are being threatened by something.  Whenever I see bait so regularly and tightly balled up, I slow way down an really look for the root cause, which is typically threatening gamefish of some sort.  We once again deployed the downriggers into this action and drew a near-instant response.

Using a pair of tandem rigs, each equipped with twin Pet Spoons, we placed the downrigger balls at 18 feet over the hybrid holding at 20-21 feet.  We scored 3 hybrid, followed by a largemouth, then another hybrid, all in about 45 minutes’ time.

As the wind got harder, the waves taller, and the temperatures colder, we decided to call it a day a bit early this go-round.  Before we wrapped up, though, we sought out a shallower, wind-protected area where I could do a hands-on demonstration with John showing him how both the smoking technique and the vertical jigging (or “slabbing”) techniques are correctly used.

We headed back in for around 10:15am and had quite the experience trying to get tied to the dock in a 20+ mph crosswind (think aircraft carrier landing in heavy seas), but, we managed, and by 10:30, John was warming his hands up in his truck, now a good bit wiser about the pursuit of these species on his “home lake”.

TALLY = 5 FISH, all caught and released

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 6:20a

End Time:  10:15a

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start:  54F (dropping to 46F over the ~4 hour span of our trip.

Water Surface Temp:  66-67F

Wind Speed & Direction:  W5 at 6:20a, shifting and increasing suddenly to NNW18-20 by 6:40a and staying at NNW17-20 for the duration of our trip.

Sky Conditions: 100% clouded, grey skies

Other: GT=50

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area  1470 through 1480 through 1481 through 1477

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

Salado, TX

www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

This morning I fished with Tony Bagliore, owner of Bagliore Concrete, on our fifth trip together on Belton Lake this year.

Tony Bagliore with a just-legal hybrid taken from 39 feet of water on slabs as a approaching dry cold front brought westerly winds and good fishing today.

As the season progressed from spring through summer and now into fall, I introduced Tony to the particulars of live shad fishing (spring) and downrigging (early summer).  This morning’s weather offered an excellent opportunity for yet another introduction, this time to multiple vertical techniques, including easing, jigging, and smoking.

Tony is a rare sort in that he is a middle-aged man who is still both eager to learn AND willing to be coached.  Many middle-aged men think they are eager to learn, but are not willing to be coached and so never really actually learn (and then you have those that don’t want to learn or be coached — they usually get their fish at Red Lobster!).  Anyway, this trip was originally scheduled for next Friday, but when I saw near-perfect weather conditions forecast less than 24 hours out, I suggested to Tony that we bump the trip up.  Here again, instead of stubbornly sticking with “the plan”, he took his guide’s advice and benefited from it.

As we got going this morning, a mild, dry cold front was due to make its way into central Texas during the morning hours.  We kind of “piddled” around for the first 30 minutes targeting some suspended fish with downriggers waiting for the skies to brighten and the wind to build.  The only reason we didn’t start a bit later is because I had hoped some birds (terns and gulls) might have shown up with this week’s mid-week cold front, and such birds often begin working at first light.  No birds yet, so, we downrigged, missing one fish on a tandem-rigged Pet Spoon setup trolled at 38 feet along a breakline between Area 511 and 1304.

By 7:15 I judged the clear skies to be bright enough for the deepwater bite I suspected would be turned on today to crank up.  We headed out to graph our first area with sonar and were fortunate enough to find deep, concentrated fish on our first sonar pass.  We buoyed these fish, set up on top of them with Spot Lock and went to work.  We spent 3 hours on these fish, putting 53 in the boat, consisting of hybrid of all sizes up to 18″ and white bass of all sizes up to 13.25″.  Over the course of our time spent over these fish, we used a smoking retrieve (primarily), an easing technique, and a jigging technique, all with TNT180 slabs in both 3/4 and 3/8 oz., and in both white and silver.  The 3/4 oz. bait edged out the smaller version, and white and silver performed just about equally.

As the action at this first area began to decline (indicated by fish no longer responding to a smoking retrieve when they previously did so) we spent a few minutes searching elsewhere for more fish in a similar scenario (deep water on a bottom feature being wind-impacted).  We found more fish almost immediately, and spent our final 30 minutes atop an aggressive school of fish that contributed another 23 fish to the count in short order.  Mrs. B. gave us an 11:00am curfew so as to be on time for a wedding this afternoon, so, we “left ’em biting” at 10:45 and headed back in.

I enjoy all of my trips with all of my clients, but I particularly enjoy fishing with more advanced anglers because with the “basics” already under their belts, we are able to take full advantage of the opportunities the fish present.  Such was the case with Tony.  Although we both missed a few fish, we just about maximized the potential we had before us today.

One thing I did specifically to help Tony improve his own efforts when fishing from his own boat was to configure my sonar and position the two of us in the boat in a way he could replicate with his boat, trolling motor, and sonar setup.  This placed us both in full view of my console-mounted sonar unit and allowed us both to observe our baits and the fishes’ reaction to them nearly 100% of the time.  A lot of learning takes place by simply observing the sonar screen for an extended period of time.

For our efforts today, we boated exactly 76 fish, including 3 drum, 4 legal hybrid striper, and a mixed bag of 69 legal and short white bass and short hybrid striped bass.

TALLY = 76 FISH, all caught and released

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 6:45a

End Time:  10:45p

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start:  48F

Water Surface Temp:  68.4F

Wind Speed & Direction:  W7 at sunrise, slowing tapering up to NW14 by trip’s end

Sky Conditions: 10% clouds on a bluebird sky.

Other: GT=80

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area   551/1304 downrigging early

**Area  1325 (53 fish over ~3 hours)

**Area 1468 (23 fish over 0.5 hours)

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

Salado, TX

www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com