UMHB BASS TEAM IN ACTION ON BELTON – 130 FISH

WHO I FISHED WITH:   This morning, Thursday, May 20th, I fished with Dr. Aaron Baggett of Belton, TX.  Aaron is part of the faculty at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor in Belton where he teaches psychology, and where he also serves as the staff point of contact for the university’s new bass fishing team.

Accompanying Aaron this morning were two of those team members, Carter Vaughn of Katy, TX, and Caleb Ramm of Salado, TX.

The weather was still good, but, we lacked a decent wind this morning, so, we had to work harder and move more frequently, but, we still put together a good catch.

 

PHOTO CAPTION:  From left: Caleb Ramm, Carter Vaughn, and Dr. Aaron Baggett, all of the UMHB Bass Team, worked MAL Lures and the LiveScope this morning with a solid result under tougher, low-wind conditions.

PHOTO CAPTION: UMHB Bass Team member Carter Vaughn landed his first freshwater drum ever.  Although he’s fished in Somerville, Conroe, Houston Lake, and Buffalo Bayou for years, he’d never landed one of these.  He was pretty happy about it!!  And, you guessed it, it hit an MAL Lure.

PHOTO CAPTION:  You just can’t take the UMHB Bass Team out fishing and not catch at least one token bass.  Caleb Ramm of Salado sealed that deal with a well-worked MAL Lure.

WHERE WE FISHED: Belton Lake

WHEN WE FISHED: Thursday (AM), 20 May 2021

HOW WE FISHED:

It was the most calm morning we’ve had in over two weeks, and, as you might expect, the fishing showed it.  It took almost a half-hour of looking to find our first fishable bunch of fish, and that only produced a handful of white bass in the boat.

Calm winds are not a death sentence, at least not with other positive factors at work like the ones we enjoyed today: rising water, rising water temperature, the influence of low pressure, and grey cloud cover.  I knew we could find and catch, but it was going to require more effort than the uber-easy fishing of late.

Fortunately, the anglers I had aboard today had a positive attitude and a good work ethic, and we landed on our feet when all was said and done.

In review, we caught most of our 130 fish at two distinct locations, doing two “short hops” at each of them.  The scenario was much the same at both … given that the fish were “low key” today, I was not searching for haystacks of fish going crazy throughout the water column, rather, just a handful of fish slightly separated from bottom was all the hint we’d get today about the presence of fish in a given area.

My crew worked the MAL Lures and Garmin LiveScope with near-surgical precision, taking full advantage of the technology despite Carter and Caleb never having seen it first-hand prior to this trip.

Also, instead of going to town catching fish immediately once we let our lures down, it was more realistic to expect that the fish were going to need to be coaxed a bit by the commotion we created by our presence and our presentations.  After a while, the fishing slowly peaked, plateaued, then fell off.  As soon as a downturn in results occurred, it was time to start looking anew.

In this way, we landed our 100th fish by 9:10AM, and stopped specifically targeting white bass with artificials by 9:30AM with 113 fish landed, including 111 white bass, 1 drum, and 1 largemouth bass.

We went on to invest the remaining 1.5 hours into attempting to catch hybrid striped bass on live shad.  During this effort, we, landed 17 more white bass, bringing our total to 130 fish, but, we did not catch a single hybrid, nor have any takedowns which I felt could have been hybrid.

By 11AM, there was the weekday version of a mass exodus off the lake as whatever bite other anglers had been enjoying must have ended as the winds went calm and the surface went glassy for the first time in several weeks — proof positive that white bass activity and wind correlate with one another.

MAL Lures  are found here: https://whitebasstools.com/

Tutorial on how to fish MAL Lures is found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDSvfXgrAUE

TALLY: 130 fish caught and released

OBSERVATIONS:  With Proctor dumping ~500CFS and Belton still accumulating without releasing, Belton is steadily rising ~.15 to .20 feet per day.

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time:  6:55AM

End Time: 11:05 AM

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 64F

Elevation:  2.03 feet high, +0.14 24-hour change, 26 CFS flow

Water Surface Temp: 70.2F

Wind Speed & Direction: N to NW under 5 until ~10:30, then going calm.

Sky Condition: Grey skies all morning; no precipitation.

Moon Phase: Waxing gibbous at 58% illumination

GT = 145

Wx SNAPSHOT:

 

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area  B0089G; count to 39 fish on MAL Lures

**Area B0198C; count to 53 fish on MAL Lures

**Area 2035; count to 113 fish on MAL Lures

Transitioned to live shad thereafter; finished with 130 fish with the last 17 sprinkled over 3 different areas.

 

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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