This morning, Tuesday, May 7, I fished with a group of five from the Fellowship of Christian Sportsmen based in the Austin area.

Joining me this morning were Burl Fulenwilder, Rick Brettnacher, Jim McGee, Kevin McConnell, and Dusty Hunt.

Lake Belton continued to rise overnight and is now around 8 feet high. There are still valid concerns about access, and about how dirty water will affect white bass fishing, but these concerns grow less with each passing, rain-free day.

Here’s how the fishing went…

Fishing this morning was nearly “cookie cutter“ compared to yesterday‘s fishing, only now with 8 feet  of flood water in the lake (it was only 4′ high yesterday).

The key was to find clear, clean water.

We fished in water as shallow as 28 feet and as deep as 52 feet today, finding abundant, aggressive schools, some with hundreds of individual fish in them.

We found that the earlier and dimmer the light conditions, the longer the fish at any given area seemed to stay interested

Close to 100% of our fish this morning were caught on the newest version of the MAL Lure. That is the MAL Dense with nickel-plated body.  On a few occasions, just before the fish quit at a given area, I had the fellows put on Hazy Eye Slabs and work them more slowly than we were working the MAL Lures. This put a few more fish in the boat, but, it put us in a position of fishing for a few hesitant fish when I felt strongly that we could move elsewhere and encounter lots of aggressive fish.

Over the course of the morning, we fished 6 distinct areas. By 10:25 the bite was letting up, and we decided to call it a good day right at the four hour mark at 11:15 with a count of 331 fish landed.

This included exactly 330 white bass and 1 largemouth bass.