1,300 MILES FOR WHITE BASS & BBQ — 125 FISH @ BELTON

WHO I FISHED WITH: This past Saturday afternoon, October 10^th, I fished with a crew hailing from West Virginia.

Mr. Jason Thompson drove down to Texas from West Virginia to visit his son, Brenden, who is a field artilleryman stationed at Fort Hood. Accompanying Jason was his girlfriend, Heather Moore, and Heather’s 15-year-old son, T.J. Goodman.

Back in Morgantown, WV, Jason works in the maintenance field, Heather is in the handy-woman business doing cleaning and running errands for others, and T.J. is working his way toward high school graduation.

PHOTO CAPTION #1: From left: TJ Goodman, Jason and Brenden Thompson, and Heather Moore with a sampling of our 125 fish catch, all taken on MAL Lures worked vertically in the lower third of the water column from 35 to 44 feet deep.

WHERE WE FISHED: Belton Lake

WHEN WE FISHED: Saturday (PM), 10 October 2020

HOW WE FISHED:

Despite weather which was 180-degrees different from today’s morning trip, this afternoon’s efforts turned out well.

We had near-90F temperatures today with clear, bright skies and light SSW winds as upper level high pressure pushed out the last of Hurricane Delta’s anti-clockwise winds and cloud cover by mid-day.

After spending some time bringing everyone up to speed on exactly how to use the MAL Lure, we fished only two distinct areas, making multiple “short hops” at both to put a total of 125 white bass in the boat this evening in right at 4 hours.

Every last fish was taken on either a white or chartreuse MAL Lure fished with a “smoking” style retrieve in 35-44 feet of water.

I just released a new video about using the MAL Lure and so thinking through the wording on the script for that video helped me improve my coaching for clients. You can see that video here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDSvfXgrAUE&t=151s

The first area we hit showed fish carpeting the bottom in 40-44 feet of water. It produced well from 3:30P through 6P, then went flat. We moved and fished up a bit shallower and found another hour’s worth of action in about 35-38 feet of water. By 7P, the sun had set and I’d really talked up Miller’s Smokehouse (which closes at 8P on Saturdays), so, we reeled lines in right at 7:00 and headed to the dock so Jason and crew could enjoy some Texas BBQ before heading back east.

TALLY: 125 fish caught and released (100% white bass)

OBSERVATIONS: We saw unseasonably high afternoon temperatures today at 91F, with a forecast for even warmer highs tomorrow, then a cold front is due in for Monday with a mid-to-late-week cooldown expected thereafter.

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 3P

End Time: 7P

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 87F

Elevation: 0.03′ high with a 0.01’ 24-hour drop and 34 CFS flow thru the dam

Water Surface Temp: 77.5F

Wind Speed & Direction: SSW3-4

Sky Condition: <5% white cloud cover on a blue sky

Moon Phase: Last Quarter (a waning moon at 45% illum.)

GT = 20

Wx SNAPSHOT: