Good Technique — 60 Fish, Belton, 21 April 2015

This morning, 21 April, I had the pleasure of fishing with Mr. Carroll Hall of Austin.

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Above: Federation of Fly Fishers Certified Casting Instructor Carroll Hall of Austin left the fly gear behind today as we sought out deepwater hybrid stripers in 28-37 feet of water using live shad as bait.

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Above: Spotted bass, readily identified by the parallel rows of olive-colored scales on their belly and an oval tooth patch on their tongue, are a bit of a rarity on Belton.  This one fell for a live shad set down around 24′ below the boat.

I first got to know Carroll about six years ago through his participation in the Austin Fly Fishers flyfishing club.  Carroll is Federation of Fly Fishers (FFF) Certified Casting Instructor who provides both individual and group instruction to those wishing to learn the art of flycasting.  Although we’ve met together, eaten together, and even went through one of Carroll’s flycasting session together, we’d never fished together until today.

A southerly wind returned to Texas today after much murky weather dampened the fishing a bit in the latter part of last week.  The first hour was slow as the wind was very light and variable, but, once the SSE wind began and then increased to around 13mph, it was game-on.

Netting shad was made a bit tougher today by the overnight lows which dipped to 49-53F area wide, but, with the help of a friend, I was able to collect ~180 baits sufficiently large for bait, and send him home with an ample supply of shad too small for bait, but just right for chum.

Carroll and I fished from 8:15a to around 1:00p, and the fishing seemed to improve throughout this time, right up to a grand finale in the last 45 minutes in which we could only keep 2 rods baited given how quickly the aggressive hybrid holding below us were hitting.

Two trends emerged which helped up improve our results.  First, at one of the shallower areas we fished (~28 feet deep) we kept getting good strikes but they resulted in torn off baits with little time to get over to the rod to tend to the strike.  I discovered that raising the baits an additional foot off the bottom forced these fish to move further with the bait in their mouths, and our strike-to-land ratio went up substantially as a result.  We also noted that the hybrid stripers demonstrated a definite preference for smaller baits.  Of the dozen or so 4+ inch gizzard shad I put down, only one was struck all day, and it did not produce a landed fish.  The small threadfin (some as small as 1 7/8″) got slurped up as soon as they reached bottom.

Carroll had never fished with circle hooks before and was pleased to see how good of a job they do when it comes to catch-and-release.  The learning curve can be a bit steep when using these hooks.  For Carroll, when I explained the importance of bringing the line tight only when the rod was under strain due to a fish’s movement away from the boat, that seemed to really click for him and his strike-to-land ratio dramatically improved thereafter.  We agreed that good technique is everything in both flycasting and circle hook fishing!

We boated exactly 60 fish today, including 51 hybrid striped bass, 6 white bass, 2 blue catfish, and 1 spotted bass (which is a bit of a rarity on Belton).

 

TALLY = 60 FISH, all caught and released

 

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 8:15p

End Time:  1:00p

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start:  53F

Water Surface Temp:  69F

Wind Speed & Direction:  SSE9 increasing to and leveling off at SSE13

Sky Conditions:  Clear and bright.

Other: GT=50

 

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 1549

**Area  150

**Area 1550

 

 

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

Salado, TX

www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com