This past Saturday morning, July 16th, I fished with “Grandpa” Fred Luther, his son, Erik Luther, and Erik’s two sons, 9-year-old Hayden, and 7-year-old Josh.  Erik and his family live in the Austin area, and Fred traveled down from north central Missouri for a visit.

The Luther boys — from left Erik, Hayden, and Josh with a sampling of the catch of shallow water panfish that provided all of this morning’s action.

My hope was to offer some variety given the boys’ age and the likelihood of disinterest developing over keeping at the same thing for very long whiles.  I came prepared for topwater, but no surface action materialized.  I came prepared for vertical work with slabs, but no white bass were to be found  active and congregated near bottom.  I came prepared to downrig, but schools of suspended white bass were also hard to come by.  I came prepared to fish for sunfish up shallow, and the “sunnies” did indeed cooperate.

After putting in about 50 minutes’ worth of effort searching unsuccessfully for white bass, we headed up shallow where rock, weed, and wood could all be found in close proximity and dropped our ultralight rigs in amidst the cover hoping for a response.  The response was overwhelming.  For a solid 75 minutes the boys landed sunfish after sunfish of various species (bluegill, green, and longear) in less than 4 feet of water until I began to see their attention and good technique began to decrease.

At this point I made another move to again try to search out some white bass, and again we struck out in a number of areas which traditionally hold fish this time of year.  A few things are for sure: the lack of wind did us no favors today, and the abundance of young-of-the-year baitfish present in the lake right now puts a lot of natural competition out there for our unnatural baits.

After about an hour’s worth of gunning for whites in 6 different areas and still not even seeing enough on sonar to be hopeful about landing white bass, we returned to sunfishing in two additional area so as to close the trip out on a positive, productive note for the boys.  We once again headed up shallow and continued to score on sunfish, and even got a few juvenile largemouth bass in the mix using the slipfloat rigs.

When all was said and done, the boys had boated 51 fish for their efforts.  The day did not come together as I had anticipated, but coming prepared to use a variety of tactics certainly paid off this morning.

TALLY = 51 fish, all caught and released

 

Wx Snapshot:

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 6:40a

End Time:  11:10a

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 79F

Water Surface Temp:  85.2F

Wind Speed & Direction:  Light & variable

Sky Conditions: Thin grey cloud cover the entire trip up to the last 40 minutes when rapid clearing occurred.

Water Level: ~5.56 feet high and falling ~0.4 feet per day with a flow of ~1,850 cfs

GT = 30

 

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Areas 200, 667, 1786 for sunfish on slipfloats

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 Friday morning, July 15th, I fished with Mr. Michael Apodaca of Salado, TX, and Israel “Izzy” Lopez, a young man serving for the summer in the youth ministry of Michael’s church.

Michael Apodaca with one of the 78 fish he and Izzy Lopez boated on their morning trip to Lake Belton.  Most of our hybrid were under 18 inches; the 14 legal (over 18″) fish we caught were right at 18″ or just a bit over — no really big fish showed up in our catch today.

Today was a day of firsts for Izzy Lopez.  He enjoyed his first boat ride, used spinning tackle for the first time, and caught his first hybrid striper.

Michael, a U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Army veteran, now serves as the G4 (head logistics guy) for the U.S. Army Operational Test Command at Fort Hood where they test equipment for suitability before it heads to the “real world” to be used by our troops.  Izzy, originally from Kaufman, TX, is a 20 year old college student attending Baptist University of America in San Antonio where he is double-majoring, studying music and theology.  He is serving as a youth intern at First Baptist Church of Salado this summer.

We met at 6 AM and by 6:20 AM not only had lines in the water, but had Izzy connected with the first fish of the day —  a double, consisting of a white bass and a hybrid striper caught on two of the three Pet Spoons on the three-armed umbrella rig he was using.

For the first 45 minutes on the water we found aggressively feeding white bass and (mostly) short hybrid stripers pushing shad to the surface in the heavy chop caused by the 12 to 14 mph wind already blowing. After observing the number of fish feeding, and the aggressiveness with which they fed, I decided to pursue these fish by closing in with the trolling motor and having Michael and Izzy cast to them. The pair managed to boat 11 fish while casting for as long as this feed lasted.

After the fish left the surface, we re-rigged the downriggers and placed our baits from 10 to 12 feet beneath the surface and continued to catch fish, taking our tally up to 18 before this fairly aggressive feed ended. When it was apparent that this feeding spree was over, we turned to live bait for the next hour and 45 minutes.

From roughly 7:30 to 9:15, we consistently boated both short and keeper hybrid along with two blue catfish on the live shad we were using as bait. Once we got a feed started beneath the boat, chumming kept the fish there, as did the commotion caused by fish being hooked and fought to the boat. As we fish this live bait, we varied the depth at which we presented our baits from 20 feet to 30 feet over a 35 foot bottom so as to present the baits slightly above the small schools of hybrid we saw regularly working in the area. By 9:15 most of the action on the rods was caused by blue catfish that had moved in on our chum, and since they were smallish, we decided to move on.  Our tally now stood at 34 fish, of which 13 were “keepers”, all just at or barely over the 18” threshold.

We headed out to another windblown area and began searching with sonar for signs of bait and fish. We were fortunate to drive right up on top of a large school of aggressively feeding white bass. I could tell by the sonar signatures that these were not hybrid, and so instead of presenting a large live baits, we used a smoking tactic with three-quarter ounce chrome slabs to quickly put another 26 fish in the boat. When this school lost interest in our presentations and moved on, I stayed in the same general vicinity and searched for hybrid signatures on sonar. When I found what I was after, we used the Spot Lock feature on my Minn Kota to hang right over top of them and placed baits in their midst. After 12 to 15 minutes we had only landed two short hybrid, and so I continued to search this area

In short order, I found yet another school of aggressively feeding white bass. We once again used a smoking tactic with slabs to finish up our morning on top of this school, catching fish after fish, and taking our tally up to a grand total of 78 fish landed for the morning.

TALLY = 78 fish, all caught and released

 

Wx Snapshot:

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 6:00a

End Time:  10:40a

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 81F

Water Surface Temp:  85.4F

Wind Speed & Direction:  S12-13

Sky Conditions: Thin grey cloud cover the entire trip.

Water Level: ~19.50 feet high and falling ~0.4 feet per day with a flow of ~6,000 cfs

GT = 0

 

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 1784/133/1602 — downrigged and threw topwater within this triangulated area for 18 fish in the first ~50 minutes on the water.

**Area 1784 – live shad for 16 fish including keeper hybrid, a short hybrid, and 2 blue cat.

**Area vic 1785 – live bait for 2 short hybrid, and smoking chrome slabs for white bass in the 1, 2, and 3 year class –  44 fish caught in this vicinity

 

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