CLIENTS: This past Tuesday evening I was joined by the Winkel family from the Lake Palestine area.  They came so their 15 year old daughter could show livestock at the Cadence Bank Center.  Jordan and Kristina chaperoned their two younger kids, James (7), and Tony (6).  With an atypical low pressure weather system causing cool, wet weather, our plans to fish from dawn forward were rained out, so, we backed off about 3 hours from dusk and went fishing in the evening.

DATE: 23 July 2024 (PM)

NEXT OPEN DATES: Monday, 29 Jul. (AM), and Thursday, 01 Aug. (AM)

PHOTO CAPTION:   From left:  Kristina, James, Jordan, and Tony Winkel with a few of the white bass the boys caught on this evening trip rescheduled from the morning due to unusually cool, rainy weather in late July.

WHERE WE FISHED: Lake Belton

SUMMARY OF HOW WE FISHED:  With two recent evening trips now conducted in the last week, I’ve found the evening white bass bite is atypically longer than the morning bite.  We found quality fish schooled and willing to rise up off bottom and strike horizontally moving lures as early as 6:45P, right on through to dark (well after sunset).  We began this trip downrigging the mouth of a windblown cove (w/ wind from ENE) and landed 8 short white bass suspended around 21′.  We took a short break from downrigging to show Jordan how I rig up to catch panfish in shallow water, resulting in a catch of 8 fish.  From that point on, we stuck with the downrigging approach from 6:45 to 8:45, catching quality white bass consistently.   I did note that, on multiple occasions, I ran well-placed baits over active fish and got ignored, which has definitely not been the case up to now.  Don’t know if the full moon or low pressure, or both (or neither LOL!) might be driving that.

LURES USED SUCCESSFULLY ON THIS TRIP:  The white bass we landed on downriggers all struck #12 Pet Spoons attached to 3-armed umbrella rigs fished precisely with downriggers to control the depth they were presented at.  Panfish were all taken under floats on bait. Find umbrella rigs and MAL Lures here: https://whitebasstools.com/

TALLY: 67 fish caught and released, including 59 white bass  (8 short, 51 legal), and 8 panfish

OBSERVATIONS:

1) Very little topwater action materialized this evening as compared to what we had before entering into the full moon period.

2) All fish were taken in under 21′.

LATEST WATER TEMPERATURE PROFILE:

Here was the water temperature profile for Lake Belton, measured with a FishHawk TD device around 10AM on July 17 …

WEATHER DATA:

Start Time: 5:15P

End Time: 8:45P

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 77F

Elevation: 0.89 feet high and falling with a 325cfs flow, resulting in a 0.05′ fall over the last 24 hours

Water Surface Temp: 84.1F on the surface.

Wind Speed & Direction: ENE breeze at ~6 all evening

Sky Condition: Light grey cloud cover all evening at 100% coverage.  A light, sporadic sprinkling of rain fell in the first half of the trip — not even enough to really feel.

Moon Phase: Waning gibbous moon at 94% illumination.

GT = 45

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS: