WHO I FISHED WITH: On Saturday morning, Dec. 12th, I fished with mother/son team Jessica and 6-year-old Joey Ybanez of Killeen. Jessica is a first grade teacher at Cavazos Elementary School in Nolanville. Each Christmas season she dedicates one full day to spend exclusively with each of her three kids, one at a time. Today was Joey’s day.
Joey got to plan the meals and the activities for the day. He and Jessica began with breakfast on the go consisting of many pounds of snackfoods provided by Joey’s grandpa. Joey seemed to home in on the Cinnamon Toast Crunch. The morning was to be spent on Lake Belton fishing with me, followed by lunch at What-A-Burger, the afternoon spent at an arcade, and closed out with dinner (another burger) at the Dead Fish Grill.
When Jessica contacted me about a month ago to schedule their trip, I actually tried to talk her out of this and into something in the warmer months when I have more variety to offer younger kids. I was concerned that the fishing would be too technical and too one-dimensional to keep such a young boy’s interest. Jessica decided to go forward with the trip, and all turned out well.
We booked this as a “Kids Fish, Too!” package, which it a bit shorter and less expensive than a full, 4+ hour adult trip.
PHOTO CAPTION #1: Joey and Jessica Ybanez put 46 white bass and two largemouth bass in the boat under tough conditions this morning. Little Joey hung in there the entire time!
PHOTO CAPTION #2: You gotta read the story for the explanation on the pink socks and wagon-load of provisions!
WHERE WE FISHED: Belton Lake
WHEN WE FISHED: Saturday (AM), 12 December 2020
HOW WE FISHED:
Overnight, a cold front moved in, changing our weather from a balmy, calm, 70F atmosphere at sunset on Friday to a cold, crisp, 41F morning with north winds and bluebird skies today. The early bird definitely did NOT get the worm this morning. I actually delayed our meeting time until 7:45, meaning we would not wet lines until at or after 8:00AM, and, even then, we did not find fish to catch for the first 30 minutes or so.
I always arrive well in advance of my clients, and, as I did so this morning witnessed birds working over bait naturally occurring at the surface right at first light, however, there were not gamefish pushing these shad there. The activity drew 4 or 5 boats, but to no avail — they quickly dispersed.
We encountered no helpful bird action this morning — everything was done by slowly probing the depths with sonar. We spent about an hour atop the first group of fish we found, putting exactly 25 fish in the boat before they got lazy (still present on sonar, but totally disinterested in presentations of any speed). We caught all of our fish here on MAL Lures, with suspended fish witnessed on Garmin LiveScope being the most likely candidates to chase and be caught, while the fish on bottom tended to be more reserved.
About the time we transitioned from our first area to our second, Joey let his mom know that his feet were getting cold. He had multiple layers of socks on, but the caused his feet to fit too tightly in his shoes, so, mom “engineered” a solution, taking his shoes off, adding a third layer of socks, and having Joey stand on a spare jacket to keep his feet dry. This actually worked okay, even if Joey did resemble a character out of a Dr. Seuss story!
We moved on to fish two more areas, both in 45-47 feet of water. Sonar revealed the fishing was going to be tough before we even dropped lures down to test things out, as the fish were super-tight to the bottom and only one fish deep. There was no clean target separation on these fish on my Garmin 8616 in DownVu with magnification turned up, meaning they could not even be seen on the lower resolution of the Humminbird Solix 15.
We just kept working the MAL Lures on the fish we could find, doing well catching cruising “suspenders”, and, once in a while, fooling a group of greedy bottom-huggers into chasing and biting, as well. This “ground and pound” got us 23 more fish before the wind went out of their sail and the bite stopped right at 11:30.
With that, I cleaned the “sticky” off of Joey’s spinning reel handle (Cinnamon Toast Crunch residue), bid them farewell, and watched Joey march off in his pink socks, headed for What-A-Burger!!
See the MAL Lure, Hazy Eye Slabs, and Stinger Hooks here: https://whitebasstools.com/
See tutorial video on how to work the MAL Lure here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDSvfXgrAUE&t=239s
TALLY: 48 fish caught and released
OBSERVATIONS: There was no helpful bird activity this morning. Although birds did feed on shad naturally occurring on the surface right at first light, these shad were not driven there by gamefish.
TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:
Start Time: 7:45A
End Time: 11:30A
Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 41F
Elevation: 1.00 low with a 0.03’ 24-hour rise and 34 CFS flow thru the dam
Water Surface Temp: 57.6F
Wind Speed & Direction: NNW10 just about the entire trip — post-frontal tapering off of wind velocity was in play.
Sky Condition: Bluebird skies
Moon Phase: Waning gibbous moon at 7% illumination
GT = 0
Wx SNAPSHOT:
AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:
**Area B0201C, 1552, 1298, vic 1325 – slow but steady action at each location under post-frontal weather.
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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