This morning I met up with Ed Hughes, his daughter, Jackie Cooper, and Jackie’s husband, Darrien Cooper, targeting white bass and hybrid striped bass on Belton Lake.

This is a more clear StructureScan shot of that same school of white bass — you can actually count each “rice grain” image of each fish and see (on the lower left corner of the screen) the “streaking” effect made by those fish rising rapidly off the bottom to inspect the commotion made by their school mates.

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Needless to say, everyone caught a bunch of white bass today!!!  We stopped at 75 when the sun broke through and Ed didn’t want to push his luck in the heat any longer.  We had just a few hybrid and one blue cat mixed in, but the vast majority of our catch today was white bass.

Ed is now 89 years old.  He’s a veteran of 3 wars:  WWII, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War.  He lived through the Great Depression, and got his start in the military in the 1940’s flying in the Army Air Corps and stuck it out for over 30 years in the military as a pilot flying all kinds of fixed-wing aircraft.  He golfs and shoots skeet every week and keeps up with his 86 year young wife, Jo.  The Cooper’s traveled in 18 hours from near Vidalia, Georgia, to visit, and our fishing trip was high on the list of things to do while in town.

We agreed to meet at 6:20am so as not to miss a bit of any early, low-light bite that might develop.  Of course, Ed and the gang were parked at the Corps of Engineer gate well before I arrived at the “gate open” time of 6:00am.  The extra time allowed us to get acquainted, get the spinning reel handles on the correct side for each person, and figure out our “battle stations” for where each person would be situated if topwater action erupted.

Not long after first light, I used my spotting scope to find some light topwater action generated by white bass.  We all threw Cork Rigs and got a fish on every well-placed cast while the action lasted.  Following this, there was a bit of a lull, which was to be expected given that the cloud cover eliminated the sudden brightening of the sky caused by sunrise.  After about 30 minutes, the skies brightened sufficiently through the clouds to trigger another topwater feed.  We stayed with these fish as long as they stayed on top, and then followed them with downriggers once they sounded, picking up only another 5 fish before this large school dissipated.

We then experienced yet another lull during which I decided to move us to a new location.  Upon arrival, I spotted frequent but scattered schools of white bass along the bottom in 32 feet of water.  We successfully downrigged for these, but found most to be small white bass.  A 3-armed umbrella rig with Pet Spoons did the trick.

It was now around 9:40, and this bite seemed to be dwindling, so, we headed to a new area.  As I idled in observing the surface for any sign of fish, I consistently saw fish at 21-22 feet beneath the surface in slightly deeper water.  No sooner did we get the downriggers deployed and land a double, than the sonar lit up big time showing fish blanketing the bottom in numbers that I have not seen since the flooding disrupted things.  I tossed a buoy, got back over these fish, and we proceeded to wear them out on slabs until Ed had enough of the heat and humidity.  By this time the trio had worked the tally up to exactly 75 fish — it was all I could do to take the fish off their hooks and keep an accurate count on my clicker.  No jumbos in the white bass catch today, but just having action from start to finish on a 4-hour trip is a great thing.

Mr. Hughes, thank you for your service to the nation!!

TALLY = 75 FISH, all caught and released

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 6:30a

End Time:  10:20a

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start:  76F

Water Surface Temp:  87-88F

Wind Speed & Direction: Light NNW breeze 3-5mph

Sky Conditions:  Humid with 80+% low grey cloud cover.

Note: Lake has dropped 0.03 feet in the last 24 hours and now stands at 594.32 above sea level, with 594.00 being full pool

Other: GT= 15

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 1125/794 topwater white bass

**Area 302/1069 started with topwater and mopped up with downriggers

**Area 929/1129 downriggers

**Area 1576 smoking for white bass

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

Salado, TX

www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

This (very hot) August afternoon, I met Mrs. April Walker and her 6 year old son, Austin, at Stillhouse Hollow for an evening of fishing.

April, herself a veteran of the U.S. Navy, met her husband while he, too, was in the Navy along the Mississippi Gulf Coast.  He later joined the U.S. Army where he now works with the Patriot Missile System.

Young Austin threw me a bit of a curveball when, at dockside he expressed fears about getting into and going out on a boat.

I did a bit of quick thinking and came up with  a way for us to still enjoy fishing without necessarily having to go very far by water.  Armed with bream poles, we targeted smaller fish using the abundant, flooded shoreline cover as hiding spots.  We found a variety of fish willing to take our presentation of worms suspended below a slip float, including bluegill sunfish, green sunfish, largemouth bass, and blacktail shiners.  Thanks in large part to his mom’s insistent nudging, he took rod in hand and did quite well at catching fish after putting his concerns about boating to the side.

Wanting to see her son overcome his fear of the boat and water, April again did some “insistent nudging” and presented Austin with some “limited options”.  Option 1:  Take a brief boat ride to overcome your fears and then go back home at a time of your choosing, or, Option 2: There was no second option.

So, Austin “chose” Option 1, overcame his fear of water, and remained very calm as we cruised at about 11 miles per hour from one boat ramp to the next closest boat ramp.  By this time, Austin had amassed a nice catch of 46 fish.  So, I challenged him to catch 4 more fish once we reached the other boat ramp so he could finish us off with an even 50 fish.  He took me up on that challenge, and quickly and easily boated 4 more fish with his new-found knowledge of angling, and then we were off on our return trip to the boat ramp from which we began our trip.

On our return trip, we went a bit faster and Austin seemed a bit less concerned about the situation than he did on the first leg of our journey.

True to her word, once we got back to the ramp, April let Austin decide what he’d like to do.  With the novelty of the one type of fishing that we did wearing off, the sun taking its toll, and the snack supply running low, Austin chose to conclude the trip at around the 2-hour mark (which is not out of the ordinary for 6-year olds).

As we walked up the hill to the parking lot together, I asked Austin if he liked fishing.  He said he did, just not from a boat.

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 = 50 FISH, all caught and released

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 4:45p

End Time:  6:45p

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start:  77F

Water Surface Temp:  88F

Wind Speed & Direction: NNW6-7

Sky Conditions:  High, clear, bright skies with some building clouds to the west

Note: Lake has dropped 0.19 feet in the last 24 hours and now stands at 621.81 above sea level, with 622.00 being full pool

Other: GT= 0

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 667 slipfloats for panfish

**Area 456 slipfloats for panfish

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

Salado, TX

www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

This morning I met Mrs. Silvia Taylor and her two children, 10-year old Mariella, and 6-year old Adrian, for a morning fishing trip on Belton Lake.  Neither child had ever been on a boat nor fished before.

Mariella won the big fish contest by a landslide today with this 4+ pound hybrid striped bass which hit a shallow running bait not long after sunrise.

Adrian had all he could handle when this hybrid ripped his line out of the downrigger release clip and headed for deep water.

Mary and Adrian’s father, Sergeant First Class Randy Taylor, is currently on an unaccompanied tour to South Korea.  An “unaccompanied tour” means a soldier’s family is not permitted to be with him or her, and therefore must remain stateside for the duration of a soldier’s absence.  Randy and Silvia first met while Randy was stationed in the Bavarian region of Germany several years ago.

This morning we witnessed some strong, albeit short-lived, topwater action in which a mix of white bass and hybrid striped bass of all sizes forced baitfish to the surface and fed upon them very aggressively, thus creating enough commotion so as to be seen and heard.  We got right into the thick of it and the kids stayed hooked up to fish for as long as the action lasted.  Due to their inexperience, we downrigged through this action instead of spending a lot of time trying to learn to cast into the action.  In the long run, we landed more fish thanks to this decision.

After the strong topwater bite ended (at about the time a mild, dry front arrived from the NW), we moved on to panfishing in shallow water, catching several varieties of sunfish, small largemouth bass, and blacktail shiners from two separate locations.

When the novelty of panfishing wore off for Adrian, and as the temperature rapidly crept up, we finished out the trip by downrigging once again, which provided us with a nice bumper crop of white bass.

In all, the kids boated 63 fish this morning and both earned a Texas Parks and Wildlife Dept. “First Fish Award”.

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 = 63 FISH, all caught and released
TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 6:30a

End Time: 10:30a

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 76F

Water Surface Temp: 86-87F

Wind Speed & Direction: NW8-9 beginning around 7:40a

Sky Conditions: No cloud cover under the influence of a mild cool front moving into the area right around 7:45a

Note: Lake has dropped 0.03 feet in the last 24 hours and now stands at 594.35 above sea level, with 594.00 being full pool

Other: GT= 0

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 813/133 topwater & downrigging early

**Area 492 panfishing

**Area 166 panfishing

**Area 687/1081 downrigging late

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

Salado, TX

www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

This morning I met Dr. Lurry Leavelle and his wife, Mrs. Donna Leavelle, at Belton Lake for a morning of white bass and hybrid striped bass fishing.

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Lurry and Donna landed these just-legal 18″ hybrid just seconds apart.  The two fish came from the same school and both fell for slabs worked vertically near bottom.

The Leavelle’s adult children had presented Lurry and Donna with a fishing gift certificate for Christmas, which we’d hoped to redeem in the late spring/early summer, but flooding prevented that and we rescheduled to this date.  Lurry is Vietnam-era U.S. Army veteran and a semi-retired Ob/Gyn doctor at Scott and White.  He and Donna have been in the central Texas area since the early 1970’s.

This has been a particularly tough summer, and although Belton is getting some bad press lately on the Texas Fishing Forum, in the local newspapers, and amongst bass tournament anglers, I’m still seeing a lot of fish and a lot of bait; getting those fish to bite, however, has been a real trick.  On numerous occasions over the past two weeks I’ve seen instances where large schools of white bass and/or hybrid stripers were holding on or near bottom in what is normally a feeding posture, yet, when I’ve run baits through them both vertically and horizontally, they simply refuse to respond, or, if they respond, the response is far less aggressive than is typically encountered during summertime conditions.

Such was the case today.  I located abundant schools of fish, yet, for all the effort we put in both downrigging horizontally and jigging vertically, it seems that we just barely got the attention of a fraction of the fish we encountered.

Our best results came in about a 60 minute window between 9:30 and 10:30am in the vicinity of Area 812/085/814.  During this time, fish which I’d already located turned on to a greater degree than they had since I’d located them.  This bite coincided with a sudden increase of wind speed and a directional shift from S to SSW.  As the wind blew, the fish turned on, affording us 50% of our catch in about 20% of our total fishing time.  As these fish ( a mix of hybrid and white bass) turned on, we jigged vertically until no fish showed on sonar, then short-hopped over top of more fish until finally the fish were no longer well-congregated and we changed over to a downrigging approach to “mop up” until the bite just died here altogether.

After that, I checked 4 other areas, finding small 5-8″ white bass surface feeding regularly in the vicinity of Area 1081.  These fish readily took a small silver slab while on top, however, there were no larger white bass or hybrid “ghosting” underneath these school, only small fish.  We caught a few while observing for larger quarry, but departed once it became clear there were no bigger fish in this area.

By 11:15a the morning bite had played out and we decided to wrap up our morning trip with a total of 21 fish landed.

TALLY = 21 FISH, all caught and released

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 6:30a

End Time:  11:20a

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start:  77F

Water Surface Temp:  86.3F

Wind Speed & Direction: S8-9, briefly turning SSW11-13 from 9:30 to 10:30, then settling back to S7-8

Sky Conditions:  A bit more humid today with ~20% cloud cover.

Note: Lake has dropped 0.03 feet in the last 24 hours and now stands at 594.81above sea level, with 594.00 being full pool

Other: GT= 20

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 812/085/814 vertical jigging and downrigging for bottom-oriented white bass and hybrid striped bass

**Area 1081 small topwater white bass

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

Salado, TX

www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

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’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