This past Wednesday morning I fished with Marcus Mitchell of the Austin area and his dad, Jim Mitchell, who is visiting from the Cleveland, Ohio, area where he typically fishes for walleye and yellow perch on Lake Erie.
Jim Mitchell shows our best hybrid from Wednesday morning’s trip on Belton. The fishing was just so-so on this second day of an atypical summertime north wind. Jim came down from Cleveland, OH, to visit his son, Marcus.
Marcus displays his best of the eight keeper (18+ inch long) hybrid we took on live shad today.
Given the current fishing situation, I presented Marcus with two options: first, we could focus on pursuing higher numbers of smaller fish by using a combination of downrigging and vertical jigging on Stillhouse, or, we could take a bit slower approach and fish for fewer but larger fish by using live shad for hybrid striped bass over Belton. Jim’s preference was for the larger fish, so, with ample live bait on board, we began our trip at 6:15 and looked for some easy surface action to sight cast for before beginning to grind it out for hybrid in deeper, open water.
Thanks to a second day of northerly winds, the topwater bite was not all that strong, nor all that visible in the chop. Add to this the fact that both Jim and Marcus were a bit rusty on the casting, and we were only able to capitalize on the topwater to the tune of five white bass. The fish simply did not stay up very long and so 2 to 3 casts per surface feeding school was about all of the chance we got at these fish.
By around 7:15 AM all topwater was done and we began the process of searching out active hybrid striped bass and tempting them with our live shad. We fished four distinct areas, all between 34 and 41 feet deep, and the scenario was very similar at each one. We found white bass, typically heavily schooled and moving quickly about, some fairly reluctant hybrid moving very closely along the bottom, with abundant young of the year shad all throughout the water column, and some pesky, small blue catfish in the lower third of the water column. As we fished these several areas over the four hours that followed, we picked up exactly 31 additional fish, of which eight were legal hybrid striped bass, one was a short hybrid, one was a channel cat, one was a blue cat, and the balance were white bass in the two and three year class.
Most of the white bass did not come on our live bait, but rather came on smoked slabs which we dropped down only when I saw abundantly schooled white bass move beneath the boat as shown on sonar.
These summer months are my least favorite for pursuing hybrid, as the fishing for that species is generally slow, and hot, and somewhat tedious. However, for those willing to put in the effort, quality hybrid stripers can certainly still be caught.
TALLY: 36 FISH, all caught and released
Wx Snapshot:
TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:
Start Time: 6:15a
End Time: 11:15a
Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 79F
Water Surface Temp: 83.4F
Wind Speed & Direction: NNE7-9
Sky Conditions: Grey cloud bank to the E which obscured sunrise, then clearing off by 7:15a
Water Level: 0.34 high and holding; 0 cfs release at dam
GT = 0
AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:
**Area 133 thru 1657 – very light topwater action for white bass
**Area 152/086 – hybrid on shad and whites on smoked slabs
**Area 1800 – small blue cat
**Area vic 1297 – hybrid on shad and whites on smoked slabs
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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