WHO I FISHED WITH: This morning, Monday, 05 August, I fished with Danny Richardson of Salado, his two adult sons, Casey and Kevin, and Casey’s son, 9-year-old Max. This was one of several events taking place during a Richardson family reunion centered in Salado.
Casey is a U.S. Air Force test pilot currently serving with the Canadian Air Force in Alberta, Kevin is a special education teacher in a public school in Buda, TX, Max lives with his mom in Idaho, and, although Danny’s home is in Salado, he is a contractor to the U.S. Government working in Afghanistan to maintain aircraft and tends to be overseas more than stateside.
PHOTO CAPTION: Danny Richardson with a Lake Belton hybrid striped bass taken with downriggers set at 21′ over a deeper bottom using Pet Spoons on a 3-armed umbrella rig.
PHOTO CAPTION: Casey Richardson with a 3.75 pound Belton Lake hybrid.
PHOTO CAPTION: From left: Casey, Max, Kevin, and Danny Richardson, each with one of the 36 white bass we landed during this morning’s topwater feeding spree.
WHAT WE FISHED FOR: Multi-species targeting white bass, blue catfish, and sunfish
WHERE WE FISHED: Lake Belton
WHEN WE FISHED: 05 August 2019, AM
HOW WE FISHED: We truly went “multi-species” today in order to keep the fish coming over the side of the boat. Not only is it summertime, but, today we had bright skies and light winds, which always makes things tough.
We began our day downrigging under low-light conditions while keeping a vigilant watch on the surface for topwater action. We landed several fish on the downriggers using the upsized Pet Spoons I switched to this past weekend. After this weekend’s wrinkle in the weather passed around noon yesterday, clearing the skies, the fish got back onto their early morning feeding schedule. Hence, we enjoyed about 45 minutes’ worth of solid topwater action from 2 and 3 year old white bass.
After the topwater action died, the post-topwater downrigging did not last long this morning as the fish sounded, dispersed, and turned off quickly thereafter.
Having seen this routinely, and having a mixed party of adults with one child, I came prepared to target blue catfish after routinely seeing them in several areas while downrigging last week. We fished using a tactic shared with me by Steve Webb earlier this spring involving cutbait, and wound up putting 8 blue cat in the boat. I was using chum to draw fish in, but the lack of wind, I felt, did not help the scent disperse well, thus, we caught what was around us, but didn’t draw in a lot of other fish.
After this, we did a bit more downrigging for suspended, moving schools of white bass and found a few schools of suspended, moving hybrid stripers while doing so. These schools numbered 20-40 individuals, but typically only gave up one or two fish per downrigger pass.
We saved a bit of time at the end for a grand finale for Max, heading up shallow to treat him to some one-on-one time with the local sunfish population.
Max landed 17 sunfish in about 25 minutes’ time and enjoyed doing so, after indicating earlier in the trip that he wasn’t all that interested in the whole proposition.
TALLY: 65 fish caught and released
OBSERVATIONS: Saw no opportunities for vertical presentations today given how fast the fish were moving after bait.
TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:
Start Time: 6:20a
End Time: 10:40a
Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 76F
Elevation: 0.26 feet high, 0.0 foot 24-hour drop, 69 CFS flow
Water Surface Temp: 85.4
Wind Speed & Direction: Under 5mph from the S the entire trip
Sky Conditions: High, wispy white cloud cover under 5% on a blue sky
GT = 20
#WhiteBassFishing #LakeBelton #StillhouseHollow
Wx SNAPSHOT:
AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:
**Area – 012 to 016 topwater action under low light conditions
**Area – 487 to 1788 post-topwater downrigging
**Area – between 2054-2055 fishing cutbait for bluecat
**Area – vic B0161C – downrigging for late morning whites/hybrid
**Area – 502 sunfish
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