WHO I FISHED WITH: This morning, Monday, August 10th, I fished with Pastor Robert Butts, his 17-year-old son, Jack, and long-time client Marcus Mitchell, all of Georgetown. Robert leads the Union Hall Baptist Church, located in Liberty Hill, TX. Marcus works for a company which produces products to track down “bugs” in complex computer server systems, and Jack is entering his senior year of high school.
PHOTO CAPTION #1: From left: Marcus Mitchell, Robert Butts, and Jack Butts with a sampling of their 232-fish haul from Lake Belton, taken on the new MAL Lures.
PHOTO CAPTION #2: Although I don’t like to target them in the summer due to poor survivability and concerns about delayed mortality, hybrid still show up in the mix with white bass routinely.
WHEN WE FISHED: 10 August, 2020, AM
WHERE WE FISHED: Belton Lake
HOW WE FISHED: I panicked a bit this morning when, at 6:19AM (with a planned trip start time of 6:30AM), Marcus let me know his party would be delayed due to a car fire on U.S. Hwy. 190 which had morning traffic backed up.
As it was, this delay only cost them about 10 minutes, but, when low-light topwater action lasts only for a brief 40-50 minute window, I was concerned that the nice catch and fast action which normally accompany that would be jeopardized this morning. When everyone arrived, they hustled to the boat. I postponed my safety briefing, but not my prayer, and then we took off for the fishing grounds.
Over the next 50 minutes, we enjoyed non-stop catching to the tune of exactly 40 white bass landed, all on my new MAL Lures (found: here). When the sun hit the water, the fish hit the road and shut down in this locale. We went searching for fish away from the crowd and found good results in two distinct locations. My plan was to cover water with the downriggers to find active fish and then fish for them vertically with MAL Lures. However, sonar revealed fish ready to feed before we even got ‘riggers in the water. I Spot-Locked on these fish, initially in 28 feet of water, and we went to work with the MAL Lures simply dropping and reeling them up, expecting strikes as the lures rose off bottom. When the fish slowed a bit, I jogged us 2 or 3 boat lengths deeper to ~32 feet and we kept right on nailing fish. I had Garmin LiveScope playing so the fellows could know when to crank their lures up as fish passed by. As one particularly large, suspended school of fish passed beneath the boat, Marcus exclaimed, “Oh, man, it’s a turkey shoot!”. It was a pretty wild morning.
By the time the fish slacked off in this area, we’d taken exactly 119 more fish for a tally of 159 fish by 9:30AM. A thorough sonar scrub of the area revealed that the fish departed this area very shortly following a wind shift from S to SW.
We moved on to one final location where I’d been finding some fish suspended in over 40 feet of water in the late morning last week. Again, my intent was to downrig to find fish and then work MAL Lures through them to capitalize on what we’d found. As we downrigged, I noted a large shoal of fish off to our left with my side-imaging manually set to 130 feet to the left and right. I set a waypoint on the center of mass of these fish, then used the i-Pilot Link system to send the trolling motor to the waypoint with GPS precision. As the boat moved, we cleared the two white bass which struck the downriggers as we made our way to the fish, stowed the trolling gear, and got ready to work the MAL Lures vertically.
Long story short, in our final 40 minutes on the water Robert, Jack, and Marcus bagged another 73 fish, including 2 hybrid stripers and 71 white bass, to end the 4-hour trip with a take of 232 fish, every last one of which were released.
TALLY: 232 fish caught and released
OBSERVATIONS: Temperature profile from surface to 60′:
0 feet 84F
5 feet 84.8F
10 feet 85F
15 feet 85F
20 feet 85F
25 feet 84.7F
30 feet 83.7F
35 feet 81.2F
45 feet 76.4F
45 feet 72.1F
50 feet 69.1F
55 feet 67.4F
60 feet 66.6F
TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:
Start Time: 6:40A
End Time: 10:40A
Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 77F
Elevation: 1.86′ low, -0.04′ 24-hour change, 51 CFS flow
Water Surface Temp: 82.9F
Wind Speed & Direction: S11 before sunrise, increasing slowly to S13, the shifting and increasing to SW13-14 around 9AM
Moon Phase: Waning gibbous with 61% illumination
GT = 75
Wx SNAPSHOT:
AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:
**Area 813 to B0018G- aggressive low-light topwater action — 40 fish in ~50 minutes
**Area vic 788 – 2 short hops; vertical work with MAL Lures — 119 fish in ~90 minutes **Area vic 1411 – one Spot-Lock; vertical work with MAP Lures — 73 fish in ~40 minutes
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
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