This past Memorial Day Monday, May 30th, I welcomed Mr. Chad Zuckero and his boys, 10-year-old Josh and 6-year-old Blaine, aboard for some “guy time”.
Chad and his oldest son, Josh, with a nice Belton Lake hybrid striper caught on live shad.
Chad and his younger son, Blaine, with a nice Belton Lake hybrid striper caught on live shad.
Despite a number of attempts at a number of venues using a variety of tactics, the trio just hadn’t put it all together in a way that produced the kind of success that keeps kids interested. Chad was hoping to not just catch fish, but to understand the approach to catching them so as to help his boys be successful.
We started with the basics — small hooks, small weights, small floats, and worms, and targeted sunfish in the newly flooded vegetation around the lake’s edge.
Our planned 6:30am start was delayed an hour and a quarter by persistent lightning overhead. As we all sat in the family car, I got to cover my standard safety briefing and talk about how we’d approach the day once the storm cleared, so at least those things were out of the way allowing to get right down to fishing once it was safe to do so.
When we got on the water around 7:45, I headed to a pair of protected coves so wind would not negatively impact the boys’ control of their presentations. I did one quick demo and the boys, both fast learners, got the hang of things and consistently landed sunfish on their own over the next hour and a half. We wound up with 31 sunfish of various sorts: bluegill, greens, and longears. I then suggested we give another tactic in another area a try for some even larger fish — the white bass.
As we headed to open water the winds really kicked up and boat control was a bit tough, thus, we only worked one downrigger at first. The fishing was so consistent thanks to the fish being tightly buckled down on one area, that we picked up a fish on nearly every pass. This led me to “fast forward” to our third tactic, that of fishing with live shad.
As we made the switch to shad over top of the fish we’d been downrigging for, our catch began to include more hybrid and fewer white bass — a nice problem to have!
Once this fairly shallow area played out as the skies brightened and the wind calmed, we moved on to deeper water more significantly impacted by the wind and continued catching a nice mix of keeper hybrid, short hybrid and white bass right up until the fish finally quit biting around 12:15pm.
TALLY = 52 fish, all caught and released
TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:
Start Time: 7:45a (due to lightning delay)
End Time: 12:30p
Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 68F
Water Surface Temp: 75.8F
Wind Speed & Direction: Calm winds after the thunderstorm passed which delayed our start, and until the skies began to clear. Winds SE17-20 as the western-most edge of the clouds passed over and started to allow clearing, followed by lighter winds at S6-8 for the balance of the trip.
Sky Conditions: 100% grey cloud cover for the first 2 hours, followed by rapidly clearing conditions.
Water Level: ~9 feet above full pool with no release of water currently ongoing. As I departed Roger’s Park, the park had been shut down, thus locking me in — the Corps Ranger left the gate code on my windshield.
GT = 50
Wx SNAPSHOT:
AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:
**Area 1753/4 sunfish
**Area 1634 whites and hybrid on downriggers and then live shad
**Area 1619 and 618 – hybrid on live shad
Bob Maindelle
Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service
254.368.7411 (call or text)
Website: www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com
E-mail: Bob@HoldingTheLineGuideService.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/bobmaindelle
