This past Saturday morning, April 16th, I fished with father and son Dennis and Ben Vacula on Belton Lake with the intention of bagging some hybrid striped bass.
From left: Dr. Ben Vacula of Belton and his dad, Dennis Vacula, of LaGrange with a pot-bellied Belton Lake hybrid striped bass. The east wind and murky skies put the bite off a bit this morning, but the pair still managed to boat 65 fish.
Ben, an anesthesiologist at Baylor Scott & White, has fished a number of trips with me, but all of them were focused on his kids. On this particular day it was “guys only”, so we set our sights on bigger game.
As much as I love to fish in cloudy, breezy conditions, winds from due E. can dampen the fishing a bit (hence the old saying “Winds from the east, fish bite least). This morning we were greeted by a stiff E. wind blowing at 12-13mph and it did indeed impact the fishing. By comparison, on my last 6 morning trips prior to this morning’s I’d been able to put clients on shallow, aggressive white bass under birds all in the same general area. Fish counts ranged from the 20’s up into the 70’s. Today, we spent just under an hour in this area and pulled only 5 fish.
By 8:45a, however, the murky skies had lightened and the winds slowed and began shifting to the ESE and the fishing began to kick in. We vertical jigged in about 36’ after seeing some bottom-hugging, heavily schooled fish on sonar. We quickly took our fish count from 5 up to 41 before I felt that the combination of wind, light level, and fish activity was sufficient to begin searching out hybrid.
I found 2 distinct areas holding both fish and ample bait, including a few legal (18” or larger) hybrid. At the first area, the fish were initially seen suspended on sonar. We managed 3 hybrid right away, but the fish then moved out despite my use of chum to attempt to hold them under us. We stayed a while longer hoping to see this group of fish circulate back by, but only small pods of smaller fish did so.
We moved around checking 3 areas out and finding little. The fourth area we checked was alive with fish and bait with heavily schooled, mainly sub-legal hybrid holding from 20 feet deep down to the bottom in 40 feet of water. It was right around 11:30a and the time when the fishing has been winding down on all of this past week’s morning trips. Since this bite appeared to just be staring, we stuck with it until the bite died.
We caught just shy of 20 fish from this area in about 40 minutes’ time and then called it a day.
TALLY: 142 Fish, all caught and released
TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:
Start Time: 7:30a
End Time: 12:30p
Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 64F
Water Surface Temp: 66.5F
Wind Speed & Direction: Winds were E12 until around 8:45, then went ESE67
Sky Conditions: Very heavy grey skies until the 8:45a wind shift, then lighter grey skies.
Water Level: 594.51 and falling with 594.0 being full pool. Water being released at 765 cubic feet per second. Lake fell 0.06 feet in the past 24 hours
Other: GT= 0
AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:
**Area 1734-1735 2 whites, 1 carp, 1 freshwater drum, 1 short hybrid
**Area 1187 one and two-year class whites and short hybrid
**Area 1738 hybrid and short hybrid
**Area 473 heavily schooled short hybrid
Bob Maindelle
Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service
254.368.7411 (call or text)
Website: www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com
E-mail: Bob@HoldingTheLineGuideService.com
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