HE – 1,000 QUESTIONS; SHE – 1,000 FISH; 144 FISH @ BELTON

WHO I FISHED WITH: This past Friday morning, July 31st, I fished with long-time Belton Lake multi-species angler Steve Webb of Harker Heights and his 11-year-old daughter, Bailey (nicknamed Skeeter). Steve books his fishing trips like I book my fishing trips in that he has a purpose in mind and a goal he wants to accomplish by the time his trip with a particular guide is concluded. Today, he came out with me specifically to “pick my brain” about summertime downrigging. He wanted to see how it is done in a real-world scenario, then do it himself so he can enjoy the results when he returns to his own boat and fishes on his own. I encouraged Steve to come with a prepared list of questions, which he did, neatly written down in a rain-proof notebook. Most of the questions I answered on the water, the balance we reserved for the parking lot as the trip concluded. In addition to all of this, Miss Bailey has been tracking the number of fish she’s landed this calendar year. Coming into the morning, her count stood at 988 fish; just a dozen shy of 1,000. A secondary goal of ours was to see her reach her 1,000 fish goal.

PHOTO CAPTION #1: That’s Steve Webb and his daughter, Bailey, with a few of the white bass we took with both downrigging tactics on Pet Spoons and vertical tactics on MAL Lures under pre-frontal conditions. PHOTO CAPTION #2: That’s Bailey’s 1,000th fish of the year, caught sight-casting to schooling white bass under low light conditions using a MAL Lure. WHEN WE FISHED: 31 July, 2020, AM

WHERE WE FISHED: Lake Belton

HOW WE FISHED: Given the SSE wind and humid feel to the air, I felt pretty confident that topwater action would emerge under low-light conditions this morning and we were not disappointed. We enjoyed an hour-plus of moderately aggressive topwater action, with Steve and Bailey seated to the left and right of me on my boat’s front casting deck with me in the middle manually running the trolling motor and taking off fish as they landed them on nearly every cast using MAL Lures cast long and worked quickly. As the direct sun hit the surface, the fish quit and we had to move on. We had a short lull in the action as the low-light bite stopped and the open water bite developed, aided by a mid-summer cold-front’s arrival, complete with a wind shift out of the west and accompanying cloud cover. The action built to a crescendo, peaking between 8:30 and 9:30 as the west wind’s velocity peaked during that time and cloud cover built to 100%. During this time we had briefly schooling white bass within 100 yards of us about 50% of the time. Even though these fish did not stay up long, they appeared frequently enough for us to get a bead on where the fish were and where they weren’t. Downrigging put a slow, steady feed of fish in the boat, but, more importantly, allowed me to observe sonar for heavy concentrations of fish worthy of stopping atop of to work vertically for. We did just that on a number of occasions, really racking up the numbers on MAL Lures worked fast and vertical. After reading about the MAL Lures all summer, this was Steve’s first opportunity to see them in action for himself. Long story short, he bought 6 of them on the spot in the parking lot after our trip was concluded!! Read about MAL Lures here: MAL LURES Around 9:30, the white bass were still feeding hard, but, one other thing Steve had requested for this trip was that we leave some time to do some of the shallow water sunfishing with Bailey which the two of them had read of in my reports. We left the white bass biting and headed up shallow to work live bait under light floats for sunfish, landing 31 of them before calling it a day and rolling home just ahead of a line of storms which pushed in from the WNW. A great day of fishing with a great student of fishing and his pretty daughter!!

TALLY: 144 fish caught and released

OBSERVATIONS: Classic pre-frontal conditions and fishing today. Fishing was solid under low light with southerly winds, then under brighter, mid-morning conditions, the westerly wind shift took place and the fishing improved sharply, staying excellent until scaling back a bit as the winds tapered before turning NW with spotty storms spawned along the front all afternoon.

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 6:20A

End Time: 10:45A

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 73F

Elevation: 1.42′ low, 0.05′ 24-hour change, 51 CFS flow

Water Surface Temp: 84.5F

Wind Speed & Direction: SSE7 before sunrise, steadily shift through S, to SW, to W during our time on the water. There was a peak wind velocity from 8:30 to 9:30 went the winds went westerly, during which the fish activity also peaked. Sky Condition: 20% cloud cover with white clouds on a clear sky, slowly transitioning to full, bright grey coverage as the winds went westerly

Moon Phase: Waxing gibbous moon w/ 3 days until full moon

GT = 70

Wx SNAPSHOT: Look at that windshift — a fisherman’s dream!!!