This past Fourth of July Monday morning I fished Belton Lake with Mike Salas, his wife Sandy, and their twin 8-yearl-old girls, Sophia and Grace, all of El Paso, Texas. Mike and his family traveled in from Waco to visit Sandy’s sister and her brother-in-law, Steven. Steven also joined us this morning.
Mike Salas with his twin 8-year-old girls, Sophia (blue life jacket) and Grace (red life jacket) with one of the 30 fish we landed today on downriggers and live bait.
Mrs. Sandy Salas held her own today, showing one of the larger hybrid stripers we landed this morning.
Uncle Steven chipped in with a nice hybrid of his own later in the trip.
This morning’s atmosphere was turbulent, with gusty winds, gray cloud cover, and lightning flickering at the tops of thunder heads up north of us in the Waco area. Turbulent conditions made for tough bait netting this morning, and I took it right down to the wire throwing the net up until just minutes before I was due to meet Mike and his family at the boat ramp.
Once we made introductions and I went over a few safety conciderations, I discovered neither of the girls had ever caught a fish before. I told the family that landing the girls first fish was job number one. Under gray and fairly dark skies, we headed for the fishing grounds.
Just as there was enough light out to see, I begin to spot fish feeding on the surface among the fairly heavy waves and white caps. This definitely called for a downrigging approach, so we put in both downriggers and in moments had Grace hooked up to a double, consisting of a small white bass and a keeper hybrid of 18.5 inches. Minutes later, Sophia hooked up with a 10 inch white bass, and just like that both girls had landed the first fish of their lives. After this initial feed, the bite fell off quickly as the fish headed to the bottom and dispersed. We continued picking up a few fish in this general area over the next hour and 45 minutes, until moving to a new area with a dozen fish boated up to this point.
As we headed to our second spot, I looked things over with sonar and found fish very near the bottom, and intermingled amidst the submerged brush now standing in 25+ feet of water. I decided to go with a live bait approach and suspend the baits just above the brush. This worked well when the fish were aggressive right after we found them, allowing us to put seven fish in the boat including several nice hybrid stripers, along with some white bass
Once the fish settled down, the bites got very tentative, causing more missed strikes than we had hook ups, and causing a lot of torn and killed baits. Seeing this development, I decided to move out just a bit further and try downrigging again while keeping the baits just above the submerged brush. This worked pretty well as it allowed us to cover a lot of ground, getting our baits in front of the few still active fish among the majority of an active fish. We wound up with another 11 fish boated this way, including two triples (three fish caught on one rod at the same time, using a that came on the three-armed umbrella rigs we were using baited with Pet Spoons.
TALLY = 30 fish, all caught and released
Wx Snapshot:
TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:
Start Time: 6:30a
End Time: 11:30a
Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 82F
Water Surface Temp: 85.2F
Wind Speed & Direction: SSE12-13
Sky Conditions: 100% low, grey, murky cloud cover until around 11:00am, then thinning and brightening, but still with 100% cloud cover.
Water Level: 24.03 feet high and falling ~0.3 feet per day
GT = 40
AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:
**Area 1746-012 Downrig for low light bite
**Area 1771 – live bait for whites/hybrid/bluecat
** Area 1778-1771-1770 for whites/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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