WHO I FISHED WITH:

This morning, Tuesday, April 30, I fished with returning guest David Lynn, accompanied by his friend and my first time guest, Dennis Tucker.

 

The plan was to pursue hybrid striped bass using live shad for the entirety of the trip.

 

Here’s how the fishing went…

WHERE WE FISHED: Lake Belton

WHEN WE FISHED: Tuesday, 30 April 2024 (AM)

HOW WE FISHED: 

This morning the air temperature was right at 68°F, we had a southeasterly wind and heavy, gray cloud cover with just the lightest touch of fog right around sunrise.

 

With these warm, windy conditions, shad netting was pretty straightforward this morning.

 

David and Dennis arrived a bit early and I finished up my shad netting duties early, so I met up with them at seven and we were headed to our first fishing area by 7:15. We had our first fish in the boat by 7:54.

 

The bite this morning was pretty much as it has been on live bait for the past two weeks with a mixed bag of white bass, hybrid striped bass, blue catfish, and freshwater drum in the mix

 

By the two hour mark this morning David and Dennis had put eight legal hybrid striped bass in the boat as well as additional just-short hybrid stripers.

 

In the final two hours of live bait fishing, they landed one additional legal fish and two additional short fish for a total this morning of nine legal hybrid striped bass.

 

The time was now 11:15 and I intended to fish until about 11:45. Seeing that the hybrid bite was dying down, and because Dennis had expressed an interest in using artificial for white bass, we put our final 30 minutes of effort into using Hazy Eye Slabs to target white bass, which were heavily schooled on bottom.

 

Up to this point we had 32 fish boated and quickly added an additional 22 fish to the count bringing our final tally to 54 fish for the morning.

 

 

TALLY: 54 fish caught and released 

 

OBSERVATIONS:

Shad were thick once again at Area SHAD040 this morning.  Here was the water temperature profile for Lake Belton, measured before sunrise on April 30th …

 

 

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