WHO I FISHED WITH:  This past Friday morning I fished Lake Belton with returning guest Brian Pennington.  On this trip Brian brought his wife, Tracy, and his brother-in-law, Trent.

Brian is a retired U.S. Army logistics officer now working at the Operational Test Command at Fort Hood, Tracy is a unit clerk at Seton Hospital in Harker Heights, and Trent, visiting from Pueblo, CO, works for the U.S. Patent Office as a patent investigator, specializing in bio-chem technologies.

From left: Tracy (the Unabomber) Pennington, her brother, Trent, and Tracy’s husband, Brian, each with a pair of Belton Lake white bass taken via a combination of snap-jigging and deadsticking on this cold, clear, post-frontal late December day.

Trent took this solid smallmouth buffalo on a light spinning rod.  The buffalo slurped Trent’s slab as we jigged near bottom for white bass.  The fish was bulky enough and heavy enough that Trent needed to hand on with both hands.  This fish maxed out my 15 pound Boga-Grip scale; we estimated its weight just under 20 pounds.

WHAT WE FISHED FOR:  This was a multi-species trip focused on white bass.  

WHERE WE FISHED: Lake Belton

WHEN WE FISHED: Friday,  December 28, 2018

HOW WE FISHED:  Bottom line: we moved around a lot today.  That is not to say we covered a lot of ground, rather, once we found fish, we caught them until they stopped biting, then moved a few boat lengths, caught a few more, then moved a few boat lengths, caught a few more, and so on.  The fish were just tight-lipped and stuck to the bottom today thanks to post-frontal high pressure, so, we had to go to them.  You’ll see the list of areas we fished with success (shown below) is longer than usual.

We employed a combination of snap-jigging with 3/8 oz. slabs with Hazy Eye Stinger hooks attached, and deadsticking using jigheads with Gulp! as the attractor.

We fished 4 general areas and landed 77 fish including largemouth bass, crappie, drum, hybrid striped bass, white bass, and smallmouth buffalo.

TALLY: 77 fish caught and released

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 7:15 a

End Time: 11:45 a

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 37F

Water Surface Temp: 53.7F

Wind Speed & Direction: WInds blew at 10-11 all day with slightly higher gusts between noon and 3:30pm.

Sky Conditions:  Cloudless, post-frontal blue skies

Water Level: 3.62′ high with an overnite rise of 1.22 feet and a flow of 1612 cfs 

GT = 75

#WhiteBassFishing #LakeBelton #StillhouseHollow

Wx SNAPSHOT:    

 AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS FRIDAY: 

**Area vic 826

**Area vic 691

**Area vic 2037

**Area vic B0054C

**Area 692

**Area vic B0050C

**Area vic 968

Bob Maindelle, Belton Lake Fishing Guide

Full-time, Professional Fishing Guide and Owner of Holding the Line Guide Service

Belton Lake Fishing Guide, Stillhouse Hollow Fishing Guide

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

WHO I FISHED WITH:  This past Thursday morning I fished with returning guests Tiffany Stork and her dad, John Jonse.  This time, Tiffany brought along her youngest son, 11-year-old Tyler, after giving him a fishing gift certificate for Christmas.  Tyler did very well with his first try at the kind of fishing we did today.

Tyler Stork of Cameron, TX, battled this 5 1/8 pound channel catfish on light spinning tackle after hooking it from out of a school of white bass we had been steadily catching.  At times, catfish and drum come in to a white bass feeding frenzy to police up the regurgitated shad that the white bass throw up as they are being reeled in.  Great job, Tyler!

And here are a few of those white bass that drew in the drum and the catfish we landed.  From left that’s John Jonse, John’s grandson Tyler Stork, and Tyler’s mom, Tiffany Stork.

WHAT WE FISHED FOR:  This was a multi-species trip focused on white bass.  

WHERE WE FISHED: Stillhouse Hollow

WHEN WE FISHED: Thursday,  December 27, 2018

HOW WE FISHED: A line of violent storms passed quickly through central Texas overnight from west to east on the lead edge of a cold front.  The storm dumped 1.6 inches of rain over us and west of us in both the Belton Lake and Stillhouse Hollow watersheds.  Both lakes rose about a foot and a half very quickly as the storm produced a lot of runoff.  As we headed out around 7:15a, there was a distinct debris line near the Cedar Gap Park with very turbid water upstream from there.  We dropped back into still-clear water and were fortunate to get into 3-year class white bass by casting blade baits up shallow as we sat hovering in 15′.  As the bite was dying around 8:30, the debris line was nearly upon us and the water was now opaque, resembling diluted chocolate milk.  Later in the day as I drove over the FM3481 bridge, it was obvious that the mud line extended all the way downstream to the Union Grove Park area.  We picked up 20 fish before the shallow bite slacked off.

We moved downstream into clearer, deeper water and found two distinct groups of fish, both offering us about 50 minutes’ worth of fishing before the fish in these areas grew disinterested and stopped biting.  Our last fish came aboard around 10:50 when the wind shifted suddenly from SSE to W and ramped up from around 8 mph to over 15mph.  We landed 53 fish in total and wrapped up our trip right at the 4-hour mark.  The fish we caught at these last two deep-water areas all came on 3/8 oz. white slabs with Hazy Eye Stinger hooks attached; we used a snap-jigging tactic for all of this deep-water work.

TALLY: 53 fish caught and released

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 7:15 a

End Time: 11:15 a

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 52F

Water Surface Temp: 54.1F

Wind Speed & Direction: SSE under 3mph at trip’s start, slowly increasing to SSE8, but then shifting suddenly and ramping up greatly to W15 around 10:50.

Sky Conditions:  Cloudless blue skies after the passage of a storm front overnight.

Water Level: 4.66′ high with an overnite rise of 0.52 and a flow of 1495 cfs 

GT = 40

#WhiteBassFishing #LakeBelton #StillhouseHollow

Wx SNAPSHOT:    

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS FRIDAY: 

**Area SH0089C – shallow bladebait action for 20 whites

**Area SH0088C – deep snap-jigging

**Area SH0087C – deep snap-jigging

Bob Maindelle, Belton Lake Fishing Guide

Full-time, Professional Fishing Guide and Owner of Holding the Line Guide Service

Belton Lake Fishing Guide, Stillhouse Hollow Fishing Guide

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