This past Monday evening, in the wake of area-wide rainfall that occurred from late Sunday night through early Monday afternoon, I fished for a second time with US Army retiree Lee Walker.
In the wake of storms that persisted through early afternoon, fishing was very spotty thereafter. Fish would turn on and then turn right back off again.
During his introduction to downrigging, Lee wound up catching a “triple”, with one fish striking each of the three Pet Spoons on the 3-armed umbrella rigs which account for the majority of the fish I catch on downriggers.
Lee had previously done both a sonar training trip with me and then, last fall, took advantage of a Veterans’ Day special I was running just for vets. We were in contact by phone between 4-5 am this morning comparing notes on weather radar hoping to get a morning trip in, but, rain, thunder, and lightning persisted, so, we pushed back to this evening.
Lee is an avid Lake Belton angler and was hoping to get some insights into summer fishing on Belton more than just going out and putting fish in the boat.
The unstable weather made things tough this afternoon, so we had to work for each of the fish we caught. We kicked off the trip by downrigging. The downrigging produced singles, doubles, and even a bonus triple (catching 1 fish on each of the 3 hooks of the umbrella rig, thus allowing the angler to catch 3 fish at a time. All the while we were downrigging, we also kept a sharp eye on sonar to see if there were any large clusters of fish on bottom that could be jigged for.
At the third area we patrolled, we got into such a cluster of fish, picked off 4 whites and 2 hybrid in under 3 minutes, and then never found another active group of fish like that the remainder of the trip.
By 7:00p, with the sun ducking in and out of thick grey cloud cover, some light surface action began to brew and lots of young of the year shad appeared on the calming surface. We both had high hopes of a sunset topwater feed, but, none developed.
When all was said and done, we landed 33 white bass and 2 hybrid stripers with the majority of the fish coming on the downriggers, 4 coming on topwater, and 6 coming on slabs worked vertically.
With tomorrow’s weather looking very unstable, I postponed that day’s trip; Wednesday looks like we’ll be back in the groove.
TALLY: 35 FISH, all caught and released
TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:
Start Time: 4:10p
End Time: 8:35p
Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 85F
Water Surface Temp: 85.1F
Wind Speed & Direction: ESE4-5 for the first 3 hours, then going calm in the final hour
Sky Conditions: ~40% cloud cover the entire trip
Water Level: 0.23 feet low and slowly falling with only evaporative losses of ~0.02 feet per day; 0 cfs release at dam
GT = 10
Wx SNAPSHOT:
AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:
**Area 1946-1584-815 downrigging
**Area 1972-904 downrigging and smoking
**Area 1271-1186 downrigging
**Area 483-1402-501 sparse topwater
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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