WHO I FISHED WITH:

This morning, Monday, April 29, I fished with father and daughter team, Brad and Avery Massey.

 

Brad’s dad who lives out in California got this trip for Brad for his birthday.

 

Brad is a US Army retiree, and Avery is just getting into the real estate business here in Central Texas.

 

Here’s how the fishing went…

WHERE WE FISHED: Lake Belton

WHEN WE FISHED: Monday, 29 April 2024 (AM)

HOW WE FISHED: 

When I first met up with Brad and Avery, I tried to get a feel for their expectations and what they hoped to accomplish during the trip.

 

I discovered that Brad owns his own fishing boat and has gotten the hang of fishing for largemouth pretty well, but the tactics and locations for white bass and hybrid stripers have eluded him. Thus, he hoped to take away from this trip an approach to finding and catching white bass and hybrid striped bass.

 

I explained that although the two do use the same areas at times and do feed on the same baitfish at times, they are two fairly different animals.

 

We divided the trip up into two blocks. The first block of three hours we dedicated to hunting hybrid stripers using live bait on downlines. The final block of about 90 minutes, we dedicated to finding and catching white bass using the smoking tactic with slabs and the sawtooth method with MAL Lures.

 

Despite a lot of environmental change and unfavorable weather conditions, Brad and Avery wound up doing quite well. The lake rose more than 1.6 feet over the weekend and we had foggy and calm conditions to deal with.

 

In three hours time we put a total of eight legal hybrid in the boat as part of a 51 fish catch which included white bass, blue catfish, and freshwater drum, as well.

 

We wrapped up the trip with a total of 90 fish. The last 39 fish landed were all white bass. We found the white bass with side-imaging, Spot Locked on top of them, and worked them with Bladed Hazy Eye slabs using a smoking tactic until they lost interest.  We then came back and worked MAL Lures vertically until they lost interest, and then, on whichever side of the boat side-imaging indicated the greatest number of fish were on, we fished for them horizontally around the perimeter of the boat using the sawtooth method and MAL Lure (MAL Heavy with chartreuse tail).

 

We wound up the trip right at noon with exactly 90 fish landed.

 

I enjoyed Brad‘s parting comment which was, “I learned a lot, and it was all worth it to see Avery smile.”.

 

 

TALLY: 90 fish caught and released 

 

OBSERVATIONS:

Shad were thick at Area SHAD040 this morning.  Here was the water temperature profile for Lake Belton, measured before sunrise on April 18th …

 

 

WEATHER DATA:

Start Time: 7:35A

End Time: 12:05P

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 68F

Elevation: 6.64 feet low, 33 CFS flow (a 2.74′ rise over the weekend!!)

Water Surface Temp: 67.9F on the surface.

Wind Speed & Direction: Flat calm all morning

Sky Condition: 100% grey skies all morning with fog thru 10:30A

Moon Phase: Waning gibbous moon at 71% illumination.

GT = 75