Last Saturday evening I fished a multi-species trip on Lake Belton with Eric and Allison Stokes.
Allison and Eric Stokes had a successful multi-species trip with me, landing blue catfish, white bass, and hybrid stripers by employing 3 different tactics. The couple landed 85 fish in under 4 hours.
Allison is a U.S. Army veteran and Eric is still on active duty. He just returned from deployment and is about to head away from home again for schooling at Fort Lee, VA, so he can advance to the rank of Staff Sergeant (E6). Allison thought it would be nice to treat him and a friend to a fishing trip before he departed.
When she asked what friend he would like to bring, Eric said, “You!”. (Big domestic bonus points there!).
The weather was turbulent this evening with a stiff SSE breeze at up to 15mph in advance of a small line of thunderstorms that quickly made their way past us. We caught catfish in about 26 feet of water for the first 90 minutes of the trip, putting 40 of these whiskered critters in the boat before they shut off. As we were about to make a move, I thought it prudent to check weather radar given what I saw brewing in the SE sky. Long story short, we had a 30 minute rain delay from 6:00 to 6:30, afterwhich the skies cleared (as did the lake of almost all fishing and recreational traffic). So, we had calming conditions and excellent fishing immediately following the storms, and right up until dark.
When we returned to the water, we did a bit of downrigging for suspended white bass over a gently sloping bottom over 25 to 35 feet of water, then, thanks to cloud cover in the western sky, the low light period preceding sunset kicked in early tonight, thus providing us with “a fish every cast” kind of opportunities up shallow for the last 40 minutes of the trip.
We finished up with 85 fish boated and Eric and Allison very glad they spent this time together on the water before their upcoming separation.
TALLY = 85 fish, all caught and released
TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:
Start Time: 4:00p
End Time: 8:00p
Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 89F
Water Surface Temp: 85.2F
Wind Speed & Direction: SSE13-15
Sky Conditions: 70% cloud cover on a fair sky; a rain interruption of about 30 minutes from 6:00-6:30p
Water Level: ~0.03 feet low. Lake is at full pool with only evaporative losses and no water being released.
GT = 10
AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:
**Area 1068 – 40 blue catfish
**Area 676-1580 downrigging for white bass
**Area 1812-1813 – white bass on topwater
**Area 009-1763 – white bass on topwater
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