This past Thursday, June 2nd, I fished both a morning and an evening trip on Lake Belton.  The morning was spent was Will Almond of Kempner, TX, and David Ross of Salado, TX.  These fellows became friends while working as pharmacists for HEB.

David Ross with a nice 4.25 pound Belton Lake hybrid striper caught on live shad at mid-morning in about 40 feet of water.

Will Almond with one of many hybrid stripers we took off the windward side of a breakline in 40 feet of water.  Short hybrid and white bass were also mixed in with the bruisers.

These two Thursday trips would wind up being the last two trips I would fish on Belton for some time to come, as rising flood water forced closure of all of the lakes Corps of Engineers ramps the following day.

For the time being, I’ll be relocating my efforts down to Lake Walter E. Long (formerly known as Decker Lake), near the Austin-Bergstrom Airport and Travis County Convention Center.  This “hot water” power plant lake fishes well for white bass, hybrid striper, sunfish, and largemouth bass.

As Will, David and I got going on Thursday, we knew we would be interrupted by thunderstorms at some point, as the low pressure system that had already dropped so much rain would sit right over central Texas and swirl storm cells over us in a counter-clockwise, hurricane-like fashion.

The two were just happy to leave the work-a-day world behind for a few hours, regardless of the conditions, so, off we went.

During our first hour on the water, we encountered some light topwater feeding activity with white bass and a few small largemouth pushing young of the year shad to the surface.  Having see the same thing happen around this time on Tuesday’s trip, this morning I came equipped with popping cork rigs specifically intended for this sort of fishing.  Fortunately, both fellow could cast both far and accurately, and they capitalized on this scenario, putting 21 fish in the boat before our first encounter with weather.

Long story short, we simply rode out a thunder-and-lightning laced deluge of rain for about 70 minutes just pulled up onto a bank in a steep sided cove so as not to be the high point for lightning to find.  We kept an eye on the weather radar app on my smartphone, and, when the radar and absence of lightning indicated all was well, we got right back to fishing (in the rain).

We hit a hump topping out at 25 feet and boated a blue cat and 2 white bass on slabs with a few more white bass and short hybrid on live shad before that area played out.

About this time, a bit of a wind from the SSE developed, so I moved us so as to fish on several underwater features being impacted by this wind.

From this point on we used live shad of all sizes to put an additional 20 fish in the boat including white bass, legal-sized hybrid stripers, and short hybrid, as well.

As we headed back in, I looked for an opportunity to demonstrate how the pair of #Cannon downriggers I have work, as the fellows had express curiosity about them.  I found a tightly schooled bunch of white bass on sonar in about 22 feet of water as we headed back to the boat ramp, so, we U-turned, dropped the downrigging gear in, and plucked one white bass out of the pack with a 3-armed umbrella rig equipped with Pet Spoons.

I extended the trip to ensure we fished well beyond the 4-hours that the fellows had paid for, and ended up our day around 1:30p with 53 fish boated.

 

TALLY = 53 fish, all caught and released

 

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 7:00a

End Time:  1:30p

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 71F

Water Surface Temp:  75-76F

Wind Speed & Direction:  SSW9-10

Sky Conditions:  100% grey cloud cover with rain through 9:45a, then slowly clearing to 40% white clouds on a blue sky by trip’s end

Water Level: ~11 feet above full pool with no release of water currently ongoing due to flooding in the lower Brazos River near Houston and Bryan.

GT = 95

 

 Wx SNAPSHOT:

 

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 1756 and the coves to the N and S of this point — topwater whites on popping rig

**Area 1632 – slab and shad for whites, hybrid, and a bluecat

**Area 1636/1622 hybrid on live shad

**Area 618/1666 hybrid on live shad

**1634 – downrigging demo for 1 white bass

 

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

This past Tuesday, May 31st, as Belton Lake continued to rapidly rise, I welcomed brothers John and Bruce Campbell aboard for a morning in pursuit of hybrid striped bass.

Bruce Campbell with a nice Belton Lake hybrid striper caught on live shad at mid-morning in about 40 feet of water.

From left: Bruce and John Campbell with the very first hybrid striped bass of the day, which, coincidentally, was the first hybrid striper that John had ever landed.  This fish hit a trolled 3-armed umbrella rig equipped with Pet Spoons.

Due to multiple boatramp closures, I had to launch at Arrowhead Park and drive by boat to Cedar Creek to pick these fellows up where they were camping.

Both brothers are originally from Arizona, but Bruce now lives in north Austin.  John drove over from Arizona pulling a camper and camped at the Corps of Engineers park at Cedar Creek on Belton where Bruce joined him for an overnight stay before the two headed to Bruce’s place for graduation exercises later in the week.  The flooding situation is so fluid (pun kind of intended), that I phoned the park rangers right at closing time (4:30pm) on Monday to determine the status of the various ramps I had as options to launch from for this trip.

We got going around 6:30am under dark, murky skies.  We headed to shallow water first where what little light was coming through the clouds would be penetrating.  We scored quickly when John’s downrigger rod went off with a double on two of the three Pet Spoons on his 3-armed umbrella rig, landing a short white bass and a keeper hybrid.

John typically fishes from a smaller boat equipped with a less-than-10 horsepower motor and trolling motor, trolling for high-altitude trout in several Arizona lakes.  One of his most productive tactics is trolling cow bells, which are a long, linear contraption of weights, spinner blades and colored beads which, for some reason, appeal to trout and salmon species – most likely because they imitate a school of baitfish.  Most of John’s fishing is done in 20 feet of water or less, so the concept of controlled depth trolling with my #Cannon downrigging equipment was intriguing to him.

Subsequent passes in this area yielded little, so we made our way into progressively clearer water.

As we cruised, I spotted a nice pod of white bass surface feeding on young of the year shad over 35-40 feet of water.  We eased into these fish so as not to spook them, and cast white slabs into them and retrieved these lures quickly to keep our baits up high in the water column.  About every other well-placed cast caught a fish while the action lasted (about 25 minutes).  During this time we boated an additional 17 fish.

From this point on, we never saw any additional surface action as the wind picked up and rippled the surface.  All of our fishing through the close of the trip was done with live shad on downlines at two different areas.

This tactic added another 18 fish to our count, including a number of keeper (18+ inch) hybrid stripers on the combination of threadfin and gizzard shad we offered.

As I dropped the fellows off at the very same location we’d begun our day at, we noted the water had risen another 5-6″ in the several hours we were on the water.

 

TALLY = 37 fish, all caught and released

 

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 6:30a

End Time:  12:15p

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 72F

Water Surface Temp:  75.8F

Wind Speed & Direction:  SSW9-10

Sky Conditions:  100% grey cloud cover for the entire trip.

Water Level: ~9.75 feet above full pool with no release of water currently ongoing due to flooding in the lower Brazos River near Houston and Bryan.

GT = 95

 

 Wx SNAPSHOT:

 

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 1668 downrigging at first light

**Area 507 topwater whites

**Area 1629 hybrid on live shad

**Area 1634/1681 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