This past Wednesday morning, July 27th, I fished Belton Lake with Matt Poston and his 15-year-old son, Hayden, both from Aledo, Texas. Matt is originally from Temple and returned home for a week’s visit to dogsit for his parents. The fishing trip was evidently his “payment”.
From left: Hayden and Matt Poston with a pair of hybrids taken seconds apart on shad as a wolfpack of hybrid entered our livebait spread.
Hayden took this nice smallmouth as we sight-cast to fish feeding on the surface.
As weather conditions improved from the instability we experienced over the past two mornings, the bite improved as well. This morning we spent our first hour or so on an aggressive downrigger bite targeting fish holding 12 to 15 feet beneath the surface using three-armed umbrella rigs equipped with Pet Spoons. When no top water action developed at the time it traditionally had under high-pressure conditions earlier this week and over the past two weeks, I suggested we go ahead and target some larger fish by fishing with live bait.
We found ample fish in 34 to 36 feet of water, but as has been the case over the past three trips, no sooner did we get baits down and a few hybrid landed, then blue catfish began to move in on our baits in droves and begin to kill our live baits before we could fool a hybrid with them. Suspecting this might happen this morning, I really held off on chumming, but even that did not keep the blue cats away for long. I found that by moving three or four boat lengths away, the hybrid would more quickly move over to our newly placed live baits whereas the catfish would stay where we had previously been fishing. Catch a few hybrid, though, and the blue cats would rejoin us in short order.
After both Matt and Hayden were able to boat several hybrid over the 18 inch mark, I suggested we invest our last hour or so using yet another technique new to them, that of presenting a slab vertically for suspended fish.
As I approached the stretch of water I had hoped to use slabs at, some top water activity caught my eye. As I studied the water more closely, I could see a fair amount of top water action taking place. We eased into this activity with the trolling motor, and began casting to the fish we saw. We picked up both largemouth bass and white bass, as well as Hayden’s first smallmouth ever. We fished in this way for about 30 minutes, and then as the top water action began to tail off, we pursued white bass and hybrid striper in deeper water where we caught them on slabs presented vertically.
Because of the time we spent focused on the top water bite, this slab fishing was almost too little, too late, as we begin using the slabs as the winds, which were already pretty light, began to subside. By around 10:35, the bite had all but ended and we decided to call it a good morning with exactly 55 fish boated.
TALLY = 55 fish, all caught and released
Wx Snapshot:
TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:
Start Time: 6:15a
End Time: 10:30a
Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 76F
Water Surface Temp: 85.6F
Wind Speed & Direction: SSE7-9, then tailing off around 10:15a
Sky Conditions: 20% white clouds on a fair sky. Unobscurred sunrise at 7:04.
Water Level: ~11.9 feet high and falling ~ 0.6 feet per day with a flow of ~5,300 cfs
GT = 45
AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:
**Area 1762-018 downrigging for low light fish just sub-surface with balls at 10-15′
**Area 793/1070 live bait for hybrid, followed by small blue cat
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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