This past Wednesday evening, August 2nd, I fished with Mr. Richard Oates, his brother Gerald, Richard’s son, Andy, and Richard’s son-in-law, Jon. The trip was in celebration of Gerald’s birthday.

The birthday boy, Gerald Oates, was treated to a half-day outing on Lake Belton by his brother, Richard Oates of Harker Heights.

Andy Oates (you’ve probably seen him at the Harker Heights Chick-Fil-A) with a pair of nice Belton Lake hybrid we took out of 36 feet of water on artificials.

I really wasn’t sure what to expect this evening because of the wet cool front which moved into the area early this morning and soured the fishing for the first half of this morning’s trip.

As it turned out, skies slowly cleared to 60% clouds and the atmosphere dried as the afternoon turned to evening.

The bite this afternoon steadily increased right up until it shut down at 8:50 p.m.

The fishing started off slow – – we downrigged for abundant, suspended white bass and hybrid striper, but if one in every 75 or 80 fish made a motion toward the downrigger ball, we were lucky.

At the second area we fished, we found the same fish situation – – abundant and suspended – – but our “see them to catch them” ratio definitely improved as perhaps 10 to 20% of the fish seen on sonar would make a positive move toward the downrigger ball.

Eventually, we got into fish active enough to hover over top of and “smoke” for using slabs.

There was a bit of a lull between 7;15 and 8;15 when we downrigged for fish that were increasingly higher in the water column and closer to shore.

Finally, there was an all-out topwater blitz as we sighted fish in a number of areas and put nearly 100 fish in the boat in our final 45 to 50 minutes on the water by casting to fish revealing their location as they fed on the baitfish on the surface. We used slabs for this work, as well.

We closed out the evening with exactly 149 fish landed.

TALLY: 149 FISH, all caught and released

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 4:30p

End Time: 8:55p

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 80F (actually cooler than the starting temp of this morning’s trip)

Water Surface Temp: 84.6F

Wind Speed & Direction: NW7-8 due to an early season, wet cold front’s passage

Sky Conditions: 100% cloud cover at trip’s start with the lightest of drizzle, slowly clearing and drying to 60% cloud cover

Water Level: 0.21feet low and slowly falling with only evaporative losses of ~0.02 feet per day; 0 cfs release at dam

GT = 0

Wx SNAPSHOT:

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 1975 downrigging with low “see to catch” ratio

**Area 904-1972 downrigging and smoking

**Area 1271-814 – pre-dusk downrigging

**Area 016-1602 – aggressive topwater action

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

Twitter: www/twitter.com/bobmaindelle

This past Wednesday morning, August 2nd, I fished a Fort Hood SKIESUnlimited program trip with 8-year-old Landon Phillips, and his dad, Major Dan Phillips, who just recently returned from his third deployment to Afghanistan.

 

Like most kids his age, 8-year-old Landon Phillips preferred the steady action of smaller fish to the longer waits required to put larger fish in the boat.  So, we spent a good bit of this morning’s trip up shallow gunning for sunfish.  Having his dad home a bit earlier than expected from deployment to Afghanistan was icing on the cake.

 

After the heavier rains stopped and the clouds thinned from dark grey to white and let some light through, the white bass and hybrid went on the prowl after baitfish, allowing us some action on downriggers and with vertical presentations made with slabs.  Landon holds our largest fish of the trip.

As I awoke at 4:15 AM, the sound of distant thunder got me looking on weather radar to see a slow moving storm cell just about to cross over Fort Hood from west to east. The thunder and lightning occurred only on the lead edge of this small storm system, but the rain hung around through around 9:30am.

Dan and Landon were okay with a little discomfort if that is what it took to catch a few fish, so with only a 15 minute delay, we shoved off from the courtesy dock at 6:45 AM on Lake Belton in pursuit of white bass and sunfish sufficient to keep eight-year-old Landon’s string stretched.

The unstable weather and gray, murky conditions definitely put a damper on the fishing during the early morning. We witnessed a widespread school of white bass break on the surface for just minutes along a breakline that slowly transitioned from 15 to 25 feet. As we got to the action, both downriggers went off each with a double, allowing us a quick four fish in the boat, and then the action shut down thereafter as more rain moved in and the clouds thickened.

Suspecting that the whites were not going to really get active again until we experienced some clearing, we began our pursuit of sunfish a bit earlier and stuck with it a bit longer than normal, but Landon really enjoyed the action it provided. Over about a 75 minute span, he put exactly 25 sunfish in the boat including bluegill and green sunfish anywhere from 3 to 7 inches in length.

Just as the sunfishing was slowing down at the one area we had elected to try, the skies began to clear from west to east, and the clouds, although still covering at 100%, went from very dark gray to white.

Almost immediately, we began to see signs of bird and fish activity that simply did not exist during the rainfall.

We made a move to the mouth of a windblown cove, ran sonar over it, saw abundant bait and white bass suspended at 27 to 29 feet beneath the surface, and ran when downriggers over these fish with balls set just 2 to 3 feet above them. We picked up fish on both ‘riggers on three consecutive passes before I put us in a hover using the Spot Lock technology on my Minn Kota trolling motor, after which we began to work the fish over using slabs presented vertically. We put a total of 17 additional fish in the boat including primarily white bass with one hybrid and one largemouth bass in the mix, as well.

For the last 15 minutes of the trip I offered Landon another shot at sunfish, because he really enjoyed the presentation to these fish as well as catching them, and he did indeed elect to spend the last portion of our trip up shallow. With much improved accuracy, Landon fished this second area we chose for sunfish very well, taking our grand total up to exactly 50 fish before we called it a good day.

When Dan asked Landon if he thought mom was going to believe they caught 50 fish, Landon was doubtful. Dan even suggested we take a photograph of my handheld fish counter just to make their story more credible.

At around 11 AM, we called it a great day and wrapped up our successful, albeit soggy, fishing trip on Lake Belton.

TALLY: 50 FISH, all caught and released

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 6:45a

End Time: 11:00a

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 82F

Water Surface Temp: 84.6F

Wind Speed & Direction: NW8 due to an early season, wet cold front’s passage

Sky Conditions: 100% cloud cover

Water Level: 0.21feet low and slowly falling with only evaporative losses of ~0.02 feet per day; 0 cfs release at dam

GT = 0

Wx SNAPSHOT:

 

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 444 to 484 to 909 to 1238 – strong fishing for 2 full hours under low light and cloud cover; downrigging a 3-armed umbrella with Pet Spoons; 30 fish

**Areas 195 and 189  – sunfishing in the shallows; 14 fish

**Area 1436 – a strong presence of fish; only landed 4 and left them biting

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

Twitter: www/twitter.com/bobmaindelle

I started off August of 2017 on the water at Stillhouse with Yvette Garcia, her soon-to-be 4-year-old daughter, Lilee, and a friend of the family, 9-year-old Lilli Moss.

 

From the left: Lilee, Yvette, and Lilli with our first fish of the trip.

 

Lilli Moss putting 3 fish at a time in the boat and gripping them like a pro!

 

Lilee Oliver with her own triple which she landed just seconds after Lilli Moss landed 3 fish at once as our pair of 3-armed umbrella rigs went through a very large school of very hungry white bass!

Yvette is a KISD teacher excited about the upcoming school year in the new Smith Middle School which relocated this year from Ft. Hood to Bunny Trail in Killeen.  As we volunteered together recently at Memorial Baptist Church’s Vacation Bible School, Yvette mentioned to me that she’d like to take her daughter fishing before school went back in session and life got busy.  Today, we made that happen!

With near-calm conditions, a bit of thin cloud cover, and the coolest morning we’ve enjoyed in weeks (76F before sunrise), we had ideal conditions for spotting fish and bait and took full advantage of that.

Where fish appeared at the surface pursuing bait, we worked with downriggers presenting 3-armed umbrella rigs equipped with 3 Pet Spoons each for a total of 6 baits in the water at any given time.

We put exactly 30 fish in the boat in just under 2 hours before the fishing slacked off and the girls began to lose interest in the repetition of this technique.

Yvette and I agreed it would be a good time for a transition to shallow water to fish for sunfish, which we did very successfully to the tune of 14 more fish added to our count, including blacktail shiners, bluegill sunfish, and longear sunfish.

After the sunfish at the second of the two areas we fished at grew wise to our tricks, I asked the girls if they’d like to spend our last 30 minutes or so pursuing more sunfish or going after more large white bass.  9-year-old Lilli was all about pursuing the big ones, and little Lilee just wanted to use my bait net to return fish to the water, so, we helped Lilli catch white bass on the downriggers, and put those captured fish in Lilee’s net to meet her desires.

After landing another 4 white bass, the calm winds and increasing heat were about all the young ladies could stand, so, we called it a great day right there and then with 48 fish landed, lots of photos taken, and good memories made to last for a long time.

TALLY: 48 FISH, all caught and released

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 6:30a

End Time: 10:05a

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 76F

Water Surface Temp: 84.9F

Wind Speed & Direction: ENE breeze under 10 mph the entire trip

Sky Conditions: 30% cloud cover

Water Level: 0.08 feet low and slowly falling with only evaporative losses of ~0.02 feet per day; 0 cfs release at dam

GT = 0

Wx SNAPSHOT:

 

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 444 to 484 to 909 to 1238 – strong fishing for 2 full hours under low light and cloud cover; downrigging a 3-armed umbrella with Pet Spoons; 30 fish

**Areas 195 and 189  – sunfishing in the shallows; 14 fish

**Area 1436 – a strong presence of fish; only landed 4 and left them biting

 

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

Twitter: www/twitter.com/bobmaindelle