On the evening of Friday, July 31st, I had the pleasure of fishing with Mr. Karl Smith and his daughter, Monique.
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Karl Smith of Killeen caught this nice Belton Lake hybrid striped bass under difficult conditions brought on by a wrinkle in our normal summer weather patterns.
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Karl’s daughter, Monique, a student at Cameron University in Kansas, got this hybrid early in our trip jigging with a slab.
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In addition to the hybrid which cooperated pretty well, the white bass were also on the prowl this evening.
About a week and a half ago. Mr. Karl Smith gave me a call wanting to do some fishing with his daughter before she heads back to college for the fall semester. Karl is retired military and now works as a civilian auditor in the III Corps Building on Fort Hood.
Although my preference is to fish mornings due to the heat, the calendar was too full to get a morning trip in before Monique had to head north, so, we planned an evening outing instead.
We got going at 5:30pm and found fish right away. These fish were among the shallowest, yet still bottom-oriented fish I’ve found thus far this summer. Most of our fish came out of only 17-21 feet of water tonight.
I normally begin evening trips with downriggers, as the bite is usually soft, and then builds towards sunset, but, this evening we found fish heavily schooled together and up off the bottom by a few inches instead of just laying low, so, we tried slabbing for them, and it worked well. We picked up our first 5-6 fish via slabbing (both white bass and hybrid) before the fish lost interest and we turned to downrigging to provide success.
The mild cold front definitely had a bit of a negative influence on the fishing, as both the morning and evening fish count was down a bit, and neither morning or evening trips today provided any fishable topwater action (which is also fairly normal during the 3 days either side of the full moon).
The most intense action came from 7:35 to 8:05 with fish and bait both moving shallow and “loosening up” a bit and biting more frequently and aggressively than over the previous few hours.
We wound up with a total of 25 fish landed for our efforts, and a good chance that I’ll see Karl back with his 14 year old daughter soon.
TALLY = 25 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: 99F
Water Surface Temp: 88.1F
Wind Speed & Direction: NNE9-12
Sky Conditions: 30% cloud cover under influence of a mild cold front that came in overnight.
Note: Lake has dropped 0.06 feet in the last 24 hours and now stands at 594.93 above sea level, with 594.00 being full pool
Other: GT= 20
AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:
**Area 1593 slabbing worked early, and downrigging worked throughout
Bob Maindelle
Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service
254.368.7411 (call or text)
Salado, TX
www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com