This afternoon I fished an afternoon trip on Belton Lake with first time guests Larry Mitcham, his adult son, Randy, and Randy’s 17 year old son, Trent.  Larry lives in the Austin area, and Randy and Trent drove down from Dayton, Ohio on Trent’s spring break to visit.

Trent with the first fish of his life — a shad-caught Belton Lake hybrid.

And, not to be outdone, Randy boated his fair share, too.

If you’ve read my articles any length of time, you’ll know that I try to fish mornings whenever possible.  The morning bite, all else being equal, always seems a bit stronger and longer than the morning bite on both Stillhouse and Belton.  In this situation, Trent and Randy were only in town for a short window of time and, with all of my mornings booked this week, we went with what we had to work with and fished in the afternoon.

The main focus of this trip was to help Trent catch the first fish of his life.  He’d been fishing once before and was not able to “seal the deal” on that excursion.  We fished with live shad on a number of areas that have been producing well in the mornings, and we tried a few other areas, as well.

We had our best action right at the beginning of our trip, and again right before dark.  In the “middle” we struggled to get bit, pulling just a single here and a double there.

We wound up with 18 fish, including Trent’s first fish, a hard-pulling Belton Lake hybrid striped bass.

 

TALLY = 18 FISH, all caught and released

 

GUIDE’S WEBSITE: http://holdingthelineguideservice.com/

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 4:15p

End Time: 8:15p

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 78F

Water Surface Temp: 62F @ lower lake, 67-68 @ upper lake

Wind Speed & Direction: SSE18 with higher gusts

Sky Conditions: Partly cloudy at 40% coverage on fair blue skies

Other: GT = 0

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area  835

**Area  1208

 

Bob Maindelle
Stillhouse Hollow Fishing Guide
Belton Lake Fishing Guide
Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service
254.368.7411 (call or text)