Leaving Fish to Find Fish — 114 Fish, Lake Belton, New Year’s Day

This past Sunday afternoon, New Year’s Day 2017, I fished with Mr. Dave Frignoca, his fiancé, Stephanie Page, and Stephanie’s dad, Robert Page. Robert retired a few years ago from the energy business in Houston and moved to the Morgan’s point area on Belton Lake. Dave and Stephanie are both located in Austin and will wed in March.

 

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HYBRID ATTACK!!  From left: Rob Page, Stephanie Page, and Dave Frignoca each with keeper hybrid landed within 10 seconds of one another as a frenzied school passed beneath the boat.
As I approached the boat ramp coming downhill around 12:45pm, I really did not like what I saw. The lake was glassy calm and although the skies were fair, there was only about 20% white cloud coverage. Although these conditions were not post frontal, they still looked tough.

As my crew arrived I very openly expressed my concerns about our conditions and let everyone know they would have to work for our fish today. My standard reaction to calm and clear conditions is to fish deep. And we did just that – – starting off in exactly 50 feet of water. Our first hour was a bit slow. We fished two deep areas on a breakline and picked up about 20 fish including primarily white bass with a few short hybrid striped bass, a few largemouth, and a few drum in the mix.  Just about the time the fish at our second stop were about to wind down, I pointed out a ripple on the water to our east headed our way, and explained that this looked like the breeze that was forecast for the last three hours of this afternoon.

That breeze did develop into a sufficient blow to energize the fish within about 20 minutes of that breeze starting. This breeze blew from just south of east at around 7 to 8 mph. Over the next 90 minutes we put an additional 70 fish in the boat. Our catch rate definitely increased as the wind became sustained.

Now at the 90 fish mark, and at around 3:45, I broke a basic rule of fishing which is “don’t leave fish to find fish” and suggested we could leave these deep, smaller fish and pursue larger white bass and hybrid striper in shallower water as the light level began to decrease as sunset approached.

As we made our way to some shallower water that produced around this time last evening, I spotted some bird activity that was unmistakably driven by fish feeding beneath. This is the first helpful bird action I’d seen on Belton since earlier last week.

We idled our way into about three dozen gulls feeding over top of white bass in the two and three year class mixed with mature hybrid stripers from 18 up to 22 inches.

Seeing that most of this fish feeding action was in the upper half of the water column, we used larger three-quarter ounce slabs and a slow smoking retrieve to close the deal on these fish. Over the next 90 minutes, we added 24 fish to our tally, all of which were larger than the average fish we were boating back in the deep water.

At one time, all three of my guests had a keeper hybrid on the line. I actually netted Dave’s hybrid and Stephanie’s hybrid in the same net at the same time, hung the net on the side of the boat, then spun around and leadered Rob’s fish into the boat. This was a great ending to an already productive trip.

We closed our trip at 5:37pm with exactly 114 fish in the boat.

TALLY = 114 FISH, all caught and released

Wx SNAPSHOT:

01jan17

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 1:15pm

End Time:  5:37pm

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 69F

Water Surface Temp:  58.7F

Wind Speed & Direction:  Calm at trip’s start, tapering up to SE7-8 by around 2p

Sky Conditions: 20% white cloud cover on a fair sky

Water Level:  0.60 feet above full pool

GT =  30

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area vic 1023 –  white bass action on a breakline with 3/8 oz. slabs using an easing tactic

**Area vic 1269 –  white bass action on a breakline with 3/8 oz. slabs using an easing tactic

**Area vic 682 –  white bass action on a breakline with 3/8 oz. slabs using an easing tactic

**Area 1879 through 712 – white bass and hybrid under birds in upper half of water column

 

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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