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
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