This morning I met up with returning client Tony Bagliore of Belton to conduct a “reconnaissance” of the shad and hybrid situation on Belton Lake. We met up at 6:45am with Job #1 being to locate and gather threadfin and/or gizzard shad with castnets. Job #2 would then be to locate and catch hybrid striped bass with those shad used as bait.
Belton Lake resident Tony Bagliore with a nice 3.75 pound shad-caught hybrid — a result of this morning’s scouting trip.
In a typical year, the weeks from the end of March to roughly the 3rd week of May offer the fastest and best quality hybrid striped bass fishing of the year with both quantity and quality of fish being excellent, and with live shad far out-producing all other methods.
The first job went longer than I had hoped, but still helped me gauge where we are in the season and how much time I will need to allot for this chore in the upcoming days and weeks. It took the two of us approximately 2 1/2 hours to gather 360 bait-quality shad.
After the bait was gathered and properly being cared for, we then probed a number of areas with sonar in an attempt to locate catchable populations of hybrid striped bass.
We fished exactly 7 areas in 3 hours’ time, finding strong fishing at 3 of these areas, marginal fishing at 1, and no fish present at 3.
In all cases, chumming definitely helped get the bite going and sustained the bite.
So as to cover water and find as many productive areas as we could in the morning “window”, we opted to fish an area only until we’d caught ~5 fish, and then to move on. If fish did not cooperate in the first 10 minutes on an area, we moved along.
For our efforts this morning, we boated exactly 24 hybrid striped bass and 2 white bass. Of those 24 hybrid stripers, approximately 1/3 were keeper-sized fish, going right at 18 inches, with 2 of those keeper-sized fish exceeding 20 inches.
These fish had a definite preference for smaller threadfin shad. Our large gizzard shad were totally ignored.
TALLY = 26 FISH, all caught and released
GUIDE’S WEBSITE: http://holdingthelineguideservice.com/
TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:
Start Time: 6:45a
End Time: 1:30p
Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 64F
Water Surface Temp: 62F @ lower lake, 67-68 @ upper lake
Wind Speed & Direction: SSW11-13
Sky Conditions: 40% white clouds on fair blue sky
Other: GT = 80
AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:
**Area 1540
**Area 1270
** Area 967
Bob Maindelle
Stillhouse Hollow Fishing Guide
Belton Lake Fishing Guide
Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service
254.368.7411 (call or text)
