This past Tuesday morning, July 5, I conducted a “Kids Fish, Too!” trip for Mr. Ed Parsons granddaughters, Skylar and Molly.

Mr. Ed Parsons with granddaughter Molly and our first fish of the morning caught on a downrigged Pet Spoon.  This was the first fish Molly ever landed in her life, thus earning her a TPWD First Fish Award!!!

Ed and Dorothy Parsons’ grandaughter, Skylar, took a liking to downrigging, and landed two white bass in the closing minutes of our trip using these devices.
Skylar is from McKinney, Texas, and Molly is from New Braunfels, Texas. Grandma Dorothy Parsons also joined us, primarily to keep Ed from getting too rowdy, and make sure the girls had enough sunblock and snacks.

My preference for “Kids Fish, Too!” trips in the summer is to fish Stillhouse, but due to the impacts of recent flooding, the entire lake is still closed to boat access, leaving Belton as our only local alternative.

The fishing was pretty slow this morning for white bass and hybrid striper. There was a moderate, first light feed from about 6:30 to 6:45am, but after that the action died hard and fast. During this brief feed, we were able to land Molly’s first fish  – a hybrid striped bass, followed by a white bass for Skylar. Both of these came on the downrigger using three-armed umbrella rigs equipped with Pet Spoons.

After this, I searched five additional areas, and found no feeding activity at any of them. At this point, I shifted gears and took the girls up shallow to target sunfish a bit earlier in the trip then I normally would have, and we stuck with it for as long as the girls stayed interested.

To target these sunfish, we went to the very backs of two quiet, flooded coves and fish amidst the natural and man-made cover there.  Hiding in the shadows we found both green sunfish and longear sunfish willing to cooperate.  The girls quickly picked up on the importance of setting the hook and paying attention to their float.  Skylar even got pretty good at presenting her small bait with the bream pole she was using which had a fixed length of 9’ of line attached to the tip (and no reel).

Skylar was intrigued with using live bait (the shad I had in my livewell), and so for our last 45 minutes on the water, I sought out some opportunities to catch fish on live bait. I found a moderate-sized school of white bass in about 30 feet of water and we put baits down over these fish. We got three pull downs, but none resulted in a fish being landed. I suggested we spend our last 10 or 15 minutes on the water using downriggers in an attempt to close out the trip on a good note. This worked out great, as we were able to put two more white bass in the boat in the closing moments of our morning on the water.

 

TALLY = 12 fish, all caught and released

Wx Snapshot:

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 6:30a

End Time:  11:30a

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 78F

Water Surface Temp:  85.2F

Wind Speed & Direction:  SSE15

Sky Conditions:  80% white cloud cover on a hazy sky most all of the morning.

Water Level: 23.9 feet high and falling ~0.3 feet per day

GT = 15

 

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 016 Downrig for low light bite

**Area 1754 & 184 for sunfish

** Area 1769 downrigging for scattered 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

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