SPRING WHITE BASS FISHING IS PEAKING – 194 FISH @ BELTON (AM TRIP)

WHO I FISHED WITH:  This morning, Monday, April 18, I fished with returning guest Jim Grier, accompanied by first time guests Jeffrey, Hayden, and Ryan Grier, Jim’s son and grandsons.

Jim is a retired CPA and Jeffrey works in the data management field supporting a health care company.  Hayden is 16 years old, and Ryan is 12.

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: Jim, Ryan, Hayden, and Jeffrey Grier landed 194 fish on this  cool, breezy, mid-April morning on Lake Belton.  For the first time this season the majority of our catch came by vertically presenting MAL Lures – we used the MAL Dense version for the fastest sink rate

WHERE WE FISHED: Lake Belton

WHEN WE FISHED: Monday (AM), 18 April 2021

HOW WE FISHED:

The occluded (stalled) front which made for a muggy, cloudy Easter weekend moved to the south and east of us overnight, thus allowing the cooler, drier air trapped behind it to move in over Central Texas.  We woke to a 61F ambient air temperature and, unexpectedly, found whitecaps crashing onto the boat ramp before sunrise this morning.  Such a wind was not forecast until later in the morning.

Forecast or not, the wind we certainly better than calm conditions.

With windy conditions, and four aboard with the two boys being relatively inexperienced, I set aside the horizontal casting option for safety’s sake and focused strictly on fishing vertically.  To that end, I stopped the boat out in open water before encountering any fish, and gave a thorough “demo” so everyone would have the fundamentals under their belts before we found fish.  As it turned out, an angry pack of white bass “crashed” my demo, allowing us to catch fish before we event started looking for them.  It wasn’t just a stray, either.  We stayed right there at the demo area and landed another 21 more white bass before officially starting the trip.

From that point on, fish remained quite easy to find and catch this morning.  The fish were in a feeding posture, thus very easy to spot on sonar.  We made four more stops whicproduced 33 fish, 72 fish, 11 fish, and 56 fish, respectively.

Around 8:15AM, a subtle shift occurred.  The fish seemed to turn off to the white 5/8 oz. Bladed Hazy Eye Slabs.  Although they chased them aggressively, they would trail inches behind but rarely strike.  This is the very behavior which led me to the experimentation with lures and retrieves which resulted in the creation of the MAL Lure family.

I had rods already rigged up with MAL Dense lures in case we were able to cast horizontally, to, I handed one to Jim, the most experienced in the bunch, and he started nailing fish.  I switched everyone over to MAL Dense lures and we were back in business.

At the next area, I gave everyone the option of fishing with the MAL or the slab.  I was a 50/50 split, but it soon became clear that the fish were opting for the MAL, so we stuck with MAL Dense lures with chartreuse tails for the remainder of the trip, amassing a catch of just shy of 200 fish before heading back in at the 4 hour mark.  As has been the case over the past 2 weeks, the fish really geared down sharply just into the 11 o’clock hour.

Our final tally of 194 fish consisted of 2 freshwater drum, 4 short hybrid striped bass, and 188 white bass.

Bladed Hazy Eye Slabs and MAL Lures are found here: https://whitebasstools.com/

TALLY:  194 fish caught and released

OBSERVATIONS: Today marked the first time the MAL outperformed the slab in a vertical presentation as the water has warmed up this spring.

WEATHER DATA:

Start Time: 6:50A

End Time:  11:10A

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 61F

Elevation: 3.62 feet low, 0.01’ fall in last 24 hours, 31 CFS flow

Water Surface Temp: 68.5F

Wind Speed & Direction:   NE13 at trip’s start, settling back to NE11 by trip’s end

Sky Condition: 80% grey cloud cover on a white sky, slowly clearing to 30% white cover on a blue sky

Moon Phase: Waning gibbous moon at 96% illumination.

GT = 135

Wx SNAPSHOT: 

 

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

Area 1589, B0202C, 187, 714, 082

 

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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