Took Those Fish to the Cleaners — 100 Fish for Rodrick & Oliver Rhoads

This past Monday morning, November 14th, I fished a father and son trip on Belton Lake with Rodrick Rhoads and his 11-year-old son, Oliver. The Rhoads family is from Georgetown, Texas. Oliver is one of five kids, all of whom are homeschooled. His flexible homeschool schedule gave him and his dad the opportunity to fish together today.

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From left: Oliver Rhoads and his dad, Rodrick with several nice white bass caught up shallow early in the morning while fog obscured the direct sunlight.

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Oliver caught our largest fish this morning, a just-legal hybrid striper that fell for his slab in about 27 feet of water.

Rodrick makes his living as the owner of a chain of Comet Dry Cleaners stores out in the Midland-Odessa-Big Spring part of west Texas.
Today’s weather was certainly helpful to the fish-catching. We had fair, cloudless skies (not so good). But, we had a southwesterly wind which ramped up to about 12 mph by trips end. This was very helpful.

We caught fish today from start to finish. We encountered our first fish up in shallow water under lowlight conditions as we cast bladebaits in less than 10 feet of water. We experienced some helpful bird activity that helped us identify where fish were holding during this lowlight time. This action extended for about an hour after which we began to continue to throw blade baits, albeit in slightly deeper water, between 12 and 17 feet.

We landed exactly 54 fish in our first two hours on the water before the shallow water bite (in less than 20 feet of water) died.

Our last two hours we spent spot-hopping and encountered solid fishing at two different locations, and in 25 to 32 feet of water at both locations.

At both locations the situation was the same – – we found heavily congregated white bass in the last 3 to 4 feet of the water column on a sloped bottom. I put the boat into a hover using the Spot Lock feature of the Ulterra trolling motor. And then we got all 3 rods working with slabs right down on, or near, the bottom where we saw the fish showing on sonar. We were able to land an additional 46 fish in our last two hours, although the last 10 to 15 fish came very slowly and took quite a bit more convincing then all of the other fish we caught. For our efforts today we landed exactly 100 fish in 4.5 hours of effort.

We landed primarily white bass, with a single keeper hybrid landed, multiple short hybrid, one freshwater drum, and two largemouth bass.

TALLY = 100 fish, all caught and released

 

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 6:30a

End Time:  11:00a

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 54F

Water Surface Temp:  71.6F

Wind Speed & Direction: SSW12

Sky Conditions: Fair and cloudless after low morning fog burned off

Water Level: ~0.11 feet high and slowly falling at ~0.11 feet per day

GT = 50

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 1664 and 1665 – shallow bladebaits for fish under birds

**Area 183, 1631, and 1828 for fish under 20′ deep on bladebaits

**Area 1681 – brief downrigging

**Area 1827, 1624, 1824  deeper vertical jigging with slabs

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

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