On the evening of Tuesday, 28 July I met Pastor Doug Lindley and his youngest of four children, Michael (age 16), for a few hours of fishing targeting white bass and hybrid striped bass on Belton Lake.

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Michael Lindley of Burnet, TX, with the 15.25″ Belton Lake white bass that earned him a TPWD “Big Fish Award”.

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Fisher of fish and men, Pastor Doug Lindley, with our largest fish of the trip, an 18.50″ hybrid striped bass.

Doug serves as the pastor at the First Baptist Church of Burnet, well-known for the “Main Street Bethlehem” production the church puts on each Christmas holiday season, turning several blocks of Burnet, TX, into a re-creation of the Holy Land around 1 A.D.

Thanks to the consistent high pressure we’ve experienced due to a high pressure “dome” now firmly in place over Texas driving all other weather around it, the fishing, both morning and evening, has been the most consistent I’ve seen since all of the flooding and subsequent draw down really threw fish and fishermen for a loop as late spring turned to early summer.

We got lines in the water around 5:30pm and initially relied on a downrigging approach to coax more active individual fish out of bottom-hugging schools of fairly lethargic fish.  This tactic worked well and allowed us to cover a lot of terrain very effectively while at the same time getting to keep a close eye on sonar for heavy schools of fish which might be susceptible to other techniques.  Indeed, we found several nice schools of fish numbering perhaps 30-80 individuals, but, each time we stopped downrigging to either cast bladebaits to them or vertically jig over them, the fish failed to respond in the least.

On one of our downrigging passes, I sighted a tight cluster of fish on sonar and gave it 5-8 second for our baits to cover over that area the boat had just passed.  Michael’s rod went off with what I could tell was a larger fish because the fish popped the line out of the release clip by its own strength (most smaller fish require manual clearing of the line from the release clip).  When we got that fish to boatside, Michael had landed one of the larger white bass I’ve seen come out of Belton in several years — a nice 15.25 inch fish that was quite plump.  This earned him a Texas Parks and Wildlife Dept. “Big Fish Award”, available to anglers who land fish exceeding set threshold lengths on a species-by-species basis.  The threshold for white bass is 15.00″.

SInce our attempts at working baits vertically and horizontally fell short, we kept right on with what was working.  All this time I was hoping for (even anticipating) a nice finale to the evening by fish feeding on topwater, given all the gamefish, bait, and the disposition of both in the time leading up to 7:45 to 8:00pm when the low-light conditions typically spur a final feed before dark.

All seemed to be falling in place nicely; in the 7 o’clock hour I witnessed shad begin to pop out of the water here and there acting nervous, and from time to time small schools of white bass would erupt on the surface but then quickly sound.

By 8:10pm, I spotted the first large, sustained schools of fish feeding on topwater and quickly got us to them.  I though all heck was about to break loose.  We changed over to topwater rigs and enjoyed a 10 minute flurry allowing us to boat 9 more fish in addition to the 21 we’d already caught.  During this time, fish drove bait to the surface, but really didn’t stay on the surface — it just wasn’t a strong feed.  By the time we saw and heard the last fish splash around 8:20p, and with plenty of light left, the fishing just died.  Our finale had kind of fizzled — but, that is the nature of fishing.

I’ve said many times before, if we (mankind) had ever figured out all that drives fish to do what they do, we would have exploited them into extinction long ago.  I’m glad there is still a bit of mystery to it!

TALLY = 30 FISH, all caught and released

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 5:30p

End Time:  8:50p

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start:  97F

Water Surface Temp:  86.0F

Wind Speed & Direction: SSE9-11

Sky Conditions:    <10% clouds on a fair sky.

Note: Lake has dropped 0.08 feet in the last 24 hours and now stands at 595.05 above sea level, with 594.00 being full pool

Other: GT= 10

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 788/163 downrigging

**Area 183 topwater action

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

Salado, TX

www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

This morning I met Mrs. Shawn Bell and her three children, 12-year-old Morgan, 8-year-old Madison, and 7-year-old Mason for a fishing trip booked through the Fort Hood SKIES program.

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 From left: Madison, Morgan, and Mason Bell with a sampling of the white bass we caught on Belton Lake in the first 3 hours of our morning trip.

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Big sister Morgan got big fish honors taking this hybrid striped bass that taped in at exactly 18.25″. Her mom, Shawn, was very happy for her!

Lieutenant Colonel and Mrs. Bell are now stationed at Ft. Hood for the second time in their military career, and live in Harker Heights. LTC Bell is currently serving as a battalion commander.

We met about a half hour before sunrise today, anticipating some topwater action early on, under low-light conditions, and we were not disappointed. Thanks to some low, grey cloud cover, the low-light period was extended this morning, and the morning bite went about 3 hours, allowing us to use downriggers to catch 29 white bass and 1 legal hybrid striped bass before the fish called it quits.

When the white bass and hybrid stripers had dined sufficiently, we changed up our tactics and went up shallow in pursuit of panfish, and caught a mixed bag of largemouth, smallmouth, bluegill sunfish, green sunfish, and blacktail shiners on bream poles for the final hour of the trip, adding another 34 fish to our tally.

I was pleasantly surprised when, as the Bell’s were departing, Mason, Madison, and Shawn provided me with a “farewell in song” which went something like, “Thank (by Mason) … Thank (by Mason and Madison) … Thank (by Mason, Madison, and Shawn) … Thank you! (by Mason, Madison, and Shawn”. Morgan, the pre-teen, did not participate in such antics, but did also thank me.
SKIES Unlimited stands for School of Knowledge, Inspiration, Exploration and Skills. SKIES Unlimited classes are open to children of active duty military personnel, retirees, Department of the Army civilians, and to Department of Defense contractors.
To enroll in SKIES Unlimited activities, children must be registered with CYSS at Building 121 on 761st Tank Destroyer Avenue (right across from the Chili’s restaurant).

There is no charge for registration; parents must bring an ID that shows their affiliation with the military, the child’s shot records, and the report from a recent physical exam. While the SKIES Unlimited programs are not free, many military families are eligible for sizeable credits toward SKIES Unlimited activities. There is a $300 “Army Strong” credit available to each child when their parent is deployed.

TALLY = 64 FISH, all caught and released

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 6:15a

End Time: 10:15a

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 77F

Water Surface Temp: 86.0F

Wind Speed & Direction: SSE6-8

Sky Conditions: A thin. low layer of grey clouds cleared off around 8:45a, leaving <10% clouds on a fair sky.

Note: Lake has dropped 0.11 feet in the last 24 hours and now stands at 595.08 above sea level, with 594.00 being full pool

Other: GT= 0

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 1001/1069 downrigging

**Area 1492 slipfloats for panfish

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

Salado, TX

www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

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From left: Brian Olds, Brandi Lujano, and Ransom Olds, each with one of the white bass we took today downrigging.

As this past week (during which I fished Belton in the evenings) progressed, the topwater bite and the action in general showed a slowing trend.  I was hopeful that with the lunar cycle waxing toward full, we might see a shift to topwater in the morning instead, but this was not to be.  Although a great quantity of rough fish (mainly smallmouth buffalo) were seen rolling on the surface before, during, and shortly after sunrise, no schools of white bass/hybrid stripers were in the mix.  This is not to say the fish were not present.  On the contrary, we caught them consistently on downriggers, it is just that they never got really aggressive enough to push bait to the surface and feed for very long.

Within 20 minutes after sunrise, and with a breeze developing, it became clear that topwater action would not be the centerpiece of this fishing trip.  So, we leaned on the summertime staple of downrigging for the lion’s share of our catch, hoping to spot some tightly schooled gamefish on bottom as we covered ground, thus allowing us to slab or throw bladebaits.

Although we did happen into 2 very tightly congregated schools of fish in 23-24 feet of water as we downrigged, our subsequent attempts to lure them with slabs and bladebaits did not yield any results.  The fish were just sluggish overall this morning, and, although we landed fish fairly consistently, many were smallish this morning.  The best fishing came from 6:30 to 8:00am, and then again from 9:15 to 11:15am.  There was a definite lull after the low light bite ended up shallow.

Brandi was the conversationalist of the bunch and helped us bypass any lulls in the fishing by engaging the rest of us that way.  Over the course of our 5+ hours on the water, the topics we covered ranged from the quality of Alaskan cruises, eating kale, fishing in Galveston, plagues of locust, the significant differences between blenders, food processors, and juicers, whatever became of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, blueberry vodka, Miranda Lambert’s social life, cheap sunglasses, and learning how to “hair whip & nae nae” (just Google it!).

TALLY = 47 FISH, all caught and released

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 6:15a

End Time:  11:30a

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start:  79F

Water Surface Temp:  84.3F

Wind Speed & Direction: S9

Sky Conditions:  5%  cloud cover under a strong high pressure dome making hot, dry conditions for the past several days

Note: Lake has dropped 0.18 feet in the last 24 hours and now stands at 1.65 feet above full pool.

Other: GT= 35

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 133 to 811 up shallow under low light conditions with downrigger balls set just 11-13 feet down.

** Area 725-816 in 22-23 feet of water with downrigger balls set 2-3 feet above bottom.

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

Salado, TX

www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

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13-year-old Josh Farris strains to display his very first hybrid striped bass as his dad, Mike, assists.

Before we officially began fishing, I first showed Josh how to correctly cast a spinning outfit so that if the fish went on a topwater blitz, he could independently catch his fair share.  This skill would also allow him to work bladebaits should the fish require a bit more coaxing.

As we got going, sonar revealed abundant bait and gamefish in the vicinity of Area 165.  We started off using downriggers with a variety of trailers on the 3 arms of the umbrella rigs we were using, just to gauge activity level and see if the fish had a preference on bait size.  We narrowed our selections down to small Pet Spoons and White Willow Spoons and were able to pick up single fish on every 2nd or 3rd pass.  The fish were sluggish and had a ton of natural bait to choose from.

From time to time when I saw a heavy school of bottom-oriented fish, we would stop and fancast bladebaits for some “bonus” fish added to the steady flow of downrigger fish coming over the side.  As we idled over a 23 foot deep section of bottom, the sonar screen lit up with fish and I told the fellows to watch the line closely.  Within 5-8 second of passing over those fish, the starboard downrigger went off in a big way and the rod bent deeply into the butt section.  Josh was connected to his first hybrid.  He did a great job listening to my coaching, keeping the fish away from the outboard, and the line away from the side of the boat.  When the fish came to net, it turned out to be a double — his hybrid’s struggle had attracted an average white bass, and that white bass latched on to one of the other 2 spoons on the 3-armed umbrella rig.

As sunset approached, the action slowly drifted to the south and up shallower until we were up in 12-14 feet casting shallower and working bladebaits slowly to get bit consistently.  There was very little action actually on the surface this evening.

When all was said and done, we boated 37 white bass up to 13.75 inches and 2 hybrid, both between 3 & 4 pounds.

TALLY = 39 FISH, all caught and released

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 5:15p

End Time:  8:55p

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start:  99F

Water Surface Temp:  86.0F

Wind Speed & Direction: S11

Sky Conditions:  5%  cloud cover under a strong high pressure dome making hot, dry conditions for the past several days

Note: Lake has dropped 0.24 feet in the last 24 hours and now stands at 1.85 feet above full pool.

Other: GT= 0

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 165 downrigging and bladebaits

** Received credible report from TB of similar sunset action at Area 024 with similar results

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

Salado, TX

www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

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From left: Jase Mayo and his Papaw, Phil Moore pose with our largest fish of the trip, a hybrid striper in the 3 pound class.

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Phil’s older grandson, Avery Moore of Dawson, TX, grins as he displays his 14″ white bass — quite a large white bass for Belton these days.

As my guests tonight, I took long-time Killeen resident Phil “Papaw” Moore and his two grandsons, Jase Mayo and Avery Moore.

The afternoon was hot as we began our trip around 4:30pm, with no evidence of fish life on the surface. Our first hour on the water gave up only sunfish and shiners as we targeted these shallow-water species with bait on bream poles.

By 5:30p, we began to see white bass coalescing on the bottom in 20-23 feet of water, but still behaving sluggishly, allowing only single fish to be caught on occasion as we precisely presented our artificial baits using downriggers.
By 6:30p, the first surface activity erupted, albeit briefly and sporadically, as shad began skipping across the surface while white bass grew more active and fed on them from below. Our catch rate increased, and doubles (catching two fish on one rod at the same time) became common.

By 7:30p, there was an all-out assault as hundreds of hungry white bass drove thousands of shad to the surface and fed upon them at will, allowing us to cast into the fray and hook a fish on nearly every cast until the boys ran out of steam around 8:15p.

TALLY = 47 FISH, all caught and released

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 4:30p

End Time:  8:15p

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start:  97F

Water Surface Temp:  86.0F

Wind Speed & Direction: S11-13

Sky Conditions:  5%  cloud cover under a strong high pressure dome making hot, dry conditions for the past several days

Note: Lake has dropped 0.31 feet in the last 24 hours and now stands at 2.30 feet above full pool.

Other: GT= 0

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 185, 184, and 663 panfishing with slipfloats

**Area 164, 165, 788 downrigging & sight casting for white bass

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

Salado, TX

www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

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Andrew Barnes of West Fort Hood, TX, with a slab white bass that fell for a downrigged bait at around 21 feet this morning.

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Andrew, his sister, and his nephew all live on West Fort Hood, TX, with his mom, Kelli Hutcheson and his step-dad, Sergeant (E-5) Sean Hutcheson.  Sean is currently at the Army’s Advanced Leader Course (ALC) in Fort Sill, OK.  The ALC is a course that consists of both a 90-day online phase and a roughly 8-week resident training phase which teaches soldiers to lead squad- and platoon-sized elements, and prepares them for promotion to Staff Sergeant (E-6).  Andrew is planning on going into the military, as well, but hasn’t decided whether he’ll go Army or Air Force.  Once his braces come off (you can’t go to basic training with braces on), he’ll start doing some soul-searching to figure all of this out.

SKIFF (Soldiers’ Kids Involved in Fishing Fun) trips are provided free of charge to families whose children are separated from a parent due to that parent’s military service, thanks to the Austin Fly Fishers and a network of supportive individuals from all over the U.S.  All it takes is a phone call from a parent to me at 254-368-7411 to reserve a date.  SKIFF is open to children in elementary and middle school, as well as teens in high school.

TALLY = 37 FISH, all caught and released

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 6:45a

End Time:  10:45a

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start:  76F

Water Surface Temp:  85.1F

Wind Speed & Direction: S9-13

Sky Conditions:  5%  cloud cover under a strong high pressure dome making hot, dry conditions for the past several days

Note: Lake has dropped 0.06 feet in the last 24 hours and now stands at 622.46 above sea level, with 622.00 being full pool

Other: GT= 0

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 667 shallow sunfish

**Area 074-402 downrigging white bass

**Area 1571/1198 downrigging white bass

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

Salado, TX

www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

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Beau, the operations vice-president with Keith Ace Hardware in the Lorena area, contacted me a few weeks back wanted to do some fishing on the front end of a Belton Lake camping trip he and his family had planned out at Cedar Ridge.  As we corresponded by email and spoke over the phone, Beau emphasized his desire to learn how to catch fish over catching fish, so he and Travis could go out in the family boat and be more consistent.  Travis, aged 16, is a quiet, hard-working kid.  He mows lawns, does odd-jobs on a 400 acre farm for his boss, and works for that same boss at a local pharmacy where Travis makes home deliveries as a service to the community.  As I introduced Beau and Travis to the various pieces of equipment on the boat, Beau would ask how much these items cost, and would then divide that cost by the price Travis charges per lawn so as to present the cost in a tangible for to his son.  For example, a $180 manually operated downrigger divided by $25 per lawn = 7+ lawns.

Fishing continued to be really tough and sporadic.  I thought we had an improving trend headed our way as the releases at Stillhouse have slowed to a trickle, as last Friday’s trip saw an uptick in my white bass catch, as some topwater action was witnessed on Saturday during a sonar training session, and as both high pressure and a new moon dominated the skies.  In addition to this, I received very credible reports of topwater action on Belton from two friends early this week.  Things were really looking good.  On Thursday, I conducted yet another sonar training session on Belton beginning around 6:30am, and, thanks to the cooperation of the fellow I was training, got to use that as a bit of a scouting trip to determine if I’d be fishing Belton or Stillhouse with Beau and Travis.

Around 8p Thursday I made the call to head to Stillhouse based on the fact that I only saw 3 very briefly appearing schools of surface feeding white bass/hybrid stripers in 3.5+ hours on Belton Thursday, and no sustained topwater action around sunrise.  Additionally, the winds were supposed to be 9-11 at sunrise, which would make it tough to spot surface feeding fish even if they were there on Belton.  For these reasons, I went with Stillhouse.

As we met at Stillhouse at 6:30am, the first part of the instruction was to show Beau and Travis my technique for catching sunfish in shallow cover using bream poles and slipfloats.  They caught onto this very quickly including some of the fine points about how best to set the hook, how to use the wind to your advantage for bait placement, and how to bait the hook for a good strike to land ratio.  We put 14 fish in the boat in short order, including bluegill, longear sunfish, and blacktail shiners, and retained these for use a livebait for largemouth bass later in the trip.  I pointed out that if they chose to pursue hybrid on Belton and could not find shad, or simply did not want to put the effort into collecting shad, that this approach can serve as an alternative to those high-maintenance fish, especially in the heat and/or if a specialized shad tank was not a part of the boat’s equipment.

Next, we headed out to open water where I gave an overview on sonar.  Since Beau’s NauticStar center-console is equipped with a Humminbird, I ran my Humminbird 1199 and my Lowrance HDS-12 Gen3 side-by-side so he could observe the difference in resolution between the two.  We covered  how the sonar works, how sensitivity and colorline adjustments impact the readings on the screen, and we identified bait, gamefish, bottom, the downrigger ball, and the developing thermocline.  As we downrigged at the first location, gamefish were in short supply — we managed only 2 juvenile largemouth bass — one on each umbrella rig.

We covered four different areas with the downriggers, seeing bait at all locations, but precious little in the way of gamefish.  We made a stop in the vicinity of Area 401/402 and encountered some scattered white bass at 21-23 feet deep over a deeper bottom in open water and worked these over for all it was worth, coming up with the only 4 white bass of the entire trip in that vicinity, consisting of 2 singles and 1 double that came as our baits went through the only solid school of fish we witnessed on sonar all morning — a large, suspended school of about 80-120 fish.  I backtracked over our GPS “snail trail” and turned on the Humminbird 360 Imaging after we found that school to try to maintain contact with it, but to no avail.

During the entire morning we saw occasional fish breaking the surface chasing after shad, but never any sustained action in terms of either time or location.  The fish continue to be scattered and suspended with pods of baitfish just everywhere from just below the surface down to around 30 feet.

Next, we shifted gears and I introduced Beau and Travis to my style of livebait fishing with linecounter reels as the centerpiece of this effort.  We found a few gamefish signatures on a hump topping out in 23′ of water and put some sunfish and blacktail baits down among them.  We “jogged” a few boatlengths/boatwidths to cover this area well, but only had 2 attempts on  our baits with no serious pulldowns and no fish landed.

We attempted downrigging at several more locations, extending the trip an extra 1.25 hours, but did not add any finny creatures to our count despite the extra effort.

We ended the day with 20 (mostly small) fish landed, but, only 4 of those were the white bass that I had planned to be the lion’s share of our action this morning.  In that, it was a bit frustrating, but, Beau really appreciated the detailed explanations I gave as to how and why I did things.  After the trip I actually had them follow me back to my home and I supplied them with what they needed to rig up bream poles of their own using some Shakespeare Wonderpoles I had on hand.

For their upcoming week on Belton, I suggested looking early and late for topwater feeding fish, and, to this end also supplied them with some small, shad-imitating baits that would cast well on light spinning outfits in order to help them take full advantage of any topwater action they discovered.

TALLY = 20 FISH (including 4 white bass)

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 6:30a

End Time:  11:45a

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start:  76F

Water Surface Temp:  86.3F

Wind Speed & Direction: S9-13

Sky Conditions:  5%  cloud cover.

Note: Lake has dropped 0.06 feet in the last 24 hours and now stands at 622.54 above sea level, with 622.00 being full pool

Other: GT= 40

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 239 (sunfish on bream rods)

**Area  207 (juvenile black bass on downriggers)

**Area 401/402 (white bass on downriggers)

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

Salado, TX

www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com