WHO I FISHED WITH: This past Friday morning, April 15th, I fished with the Shevlin family of San Antonio.
Anne Shevlin and her two kids, Daniel (age 17) and Rose (age 9) camped out at one of the Corps of Engineers parks on Lake Belton overnight before coming aboard this morning.
Daniel has his sights set on studying finance at Texas Tech in Lubbock in the autumn, after wrapping up his Eagle Scout project and graduating high school this spring.
We’d originally scheduled the trip for April 16th, but, after we’d done so, Daniel’s senior prom was scheduled for the same date, so, we bumped the fishing up a day and had a great time together on the water.
Here is how the fishing went …
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My next openings will be on May 11th and June 21st. Weekday mornings are always best. Saturdays are available for on-the-water sonar training sessions (only) until after Labor Day when I’ll again offer Saturday morning fishing trip (until mid-March 2023).
PHOTO CAPTION: From left: Anne Shevlin and her kids, Rose and Daniel, with a handful of the 133 fish they landed under grey skies this Good Friday morning.
WHERE WE FISHED: Lake Belton
WHEN WE FISHED: Friday (AM), 15 April 2021
HOW WE FISHED:
With a fully greyed-over sky, the fishing eased to a start this morning, with our first hour providing just a few fish here and there before things got going with a brightening sky and increasing breeze.
We enjoyed our first bit of success beginning in about 28’ off a blunt point. I could see small groups of 6-8 fish here, there, and everywhere. They weren’t banded together in a large school, but, I felt there was enough potential here to give it a try.
We did a lot of changing up between casting horizontally with the MAL Dense lures and fishing vertically with a “smoking” tactic using 5/8 oz. white Bladed Hazy Eye Slabs as fish began to chase shad to the surface around the boat and within casting range, only to sound, thus requiring us to fish near bottom.
Gradually, the whites nudged the shad toward the shoreline, thus using both the water’s surface and the bank as edges against which to corral the bait. Once they moved shallow, I once again switched everyone over, this time to MAL Originals due to their lighter weight so they would stay up off bottom during the retrieve. This fishing was solid until around 9:30 when the skies got a bit too bright and the fish moved off to deep water.
We moved deep, as well. In the 90 minutes which followed, we took our tally from 40 fish up to 133 fish as we worked 5/8 oz. Bladed Hazy Eye Slabs vertically through very aggressive, deep water fish in 35-40 feet of water. All three of my crew quickly got the hang of using the Garmin LiveScope to enhance their efforts. Particularly productive, because many (the majority) of these fish were suspended, was singling out one fish and presenting to it in such a way that the bait rose upward directly in front of the fish’s direction of travel. When this scenario plays out, it is as close to a “gimme” as there is in white bass fishing.
As has been the case all week, the fish quickly began shutting down in the 11 o’clock hour.
Our final tally of 133 fish consisted of 3 freshwater drum, 4 short hybrid striped bass, and 126 white bass.
Bladed Hazy Eye Slabs and MAL Lures are found here: https://whitebasstools.com/
TALLY: 133 fish caught and released
OBSERVATIONS: An occluded front stalled just to our NW providing a cool, grey morning with fairly high humidity, as we were still on the warm side of the front. This also made the weekend weather very hard to predict.
WEATHER DATA:
Start Time: 7:00A
End Time: 11:10A
Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 64F
Elevation: 3.6 feet low, 0.03′ fall in last 24 hours, 34 CFS flow
Water Surface Temp: 66.5F
Wind Speed & Direction: SSE6 at start, gently tapering up to SSE11 by trip’s end
Sky Condition: Light grey skies all morning
Moon Phase: Waxing gibbous moon at 98% illumination.
GT = 130
Wx SNAPSHOT:
AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:
Area 365 to shore, B0098G, 1544
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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