WHO I FISHED WITH: This past Tuesday morning I fished with returning guests Steve Stewart, Jerry Weathers and Jimmy Helm. The three men have been friends since boyhood, all originally coming to know one another through the church they attended as boys and still attend to this day. All are “actively retired”, either still engaged in the work they once did full time, and/or engaged in other pursuits requiring their effort and energy.
PHOTO CAPTION: This past Tuesday morning, Steve Stewart of Georgetown landed the season’s largest hybrid to date to come over the gunwale. This healthy, well-proportioned fish weighed exactly 6.50 pounds on a certified scale. Nice job, Steve!
PHOTO CAPTION: Jimmy Helm with a 5.50 pound hybrid — this fish tied for 3rd largest hybrid of the season behind a 5.75 pound fish landed the week before last.
PHOTO CAPTION: Jerry Weathers with a 4-pound class hybrid that took a “jumbo” threadfin shad which measured over 5.00″.
WHAT WE FISHED FOR: This trip was split between chasing hybrid striped bass with live bait in the first half, and chasing white bass with artificial bait in the second half.
WHERE WE FISHED: Lake Belton
WHEN WE FISHED: 07 May 2019, PM
HOW WE FISHED: As has been the case for most trips over the past 3+ weeks now, the strong early morning hybrid bite has really nosedived around 9:30am, with rare instances of seeing multiple fish in schools excitedly tear through baits after that point in the morning. Seeing this trend over and over has allowed me to offer my guests the opportunity of catching hybrid early, then gunning for other species with lighter tackle using artificial baits later in the morning.
Of course, for the “hard core” who only want big hybrid, we’ll continue to press hard after them, but, for those who prefer action, this is a nice alternative.
Today, we pursued hybrid through 9:30, landing exactly 13 legal fish including the season’s single largest hybrid to date, a 6.50 pound fish landed by Steve Stewart.
When the hybrid action wound down, we then pursued white bass in more turbid waters. My experimentation with tailspinners versus slabs in the turbid water was a huge success on Monday evening, so, these were our “go-to” baits in the same areas this morning. We got into two separate groups of active white bass. The first was in ~26 feet of water, thus, we fished the tailspinners vertically for these fish which were tightly grouped by using a smoking tactic. The second group of white bass was in only 15-17 feet of water and seemed reluctant to hang under the boat as fish in this shallow of water often do. Therefore, we backed off of these fish and cast horizontally to them using a lift-drop tactic and caught fish steadily right up until 11:40 when the skies brightened, the sun’s heat could be felt suddenly more intensely, and the fish shut down.
OBSERVATIONS: SHAD025 was loaded down with spawners this morning allowing for “one and done” netting of high quality, large, colorful spawning shad. 24-26′ was the magic number for white bass this morning. Everywhere I searched with sonar had at least a few white bass in this depth range.
TALLY: 71 fish caught and released – including 13 legal hybrid
TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:
Start Time: 7:00a
End Time: 11:40a
Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 68F
Elevation: 6.56 feet high with a 0.51′ 24-hour rise and a flow of 2064cfs
Water Surface Temp: 70.6F
Wind Speed & Direction: mph
Sky Conditions: Grey skies all morning, starting off thick and steadily tapering out until the sun finally broke through in patches by around 11:15am
GT = 55
#WhiteBassFishing #LakeBelton #StillhouseHollow
Wx SNAPSHOT:
AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:
**Area v2059 and B0151C – 23 fish incl. 13 legal hybrid by 9:30a
**Area vB0115C – vertical tailspinners for aggressive white bass at 24-26′
**Area v1634 – horizontal tailspinners for aggressive white bass in under 20′
Bob Maindelle
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