Day: April 16, 2025

No Bait Today & the Whites Came to Play – 178 Fish on MAL Heavies & Hazy Eyes

by Bob Maindelle

CLIENTS: This morning, Wednesday, April 16th, I fished with returning guests Gary and Rachel Davidson from Kerrville, Texas. They brought two friends along with them – Ryan Johnson and Ronnie Langford — both from the Texas Hill Country out near Lake Buchanan.

DATE: Wednesday, 16 April 2025 (AM)

NEXT OPEN DATE FOR FISHING:  02 June (AM) 

NEXT OPEN DATES FOR SONAR TRAINING: 21 June (AM)

 

PHOTO CAPTION: From left: Rachel and Gary Davidson, Ryan Johnson, and Ronnie Langford with a portion of their 178-fish catch made on

 

WHERE WE FISHED: Lake Belton

SUMMARY OF HOW WE FISHED:

After two consecutive days fishing live bait targeting hybrid striped bass, I shifted gears this morning and targeted white bass using artificials. The shad spawn was going on this morning and that got the bite off to an early start. It tapered up to a peak about two and three-quarter hours long, then tapered back down to nil by 11:30.

In order to familiarize my two new guests with the vertical tactics we be using today, I equipped them with the silver, three-quarter ounce Bladed Hazy Eye Slab, and we worked them vertically in conjunction with Garmin LiveScope and a splashing device used to draw fish to the boat and keep them there.  We continued on with this tactic at a second location, putting a total of 50 fish in the boat before making a move to a third area and changing up our presentation.

At this third area, birds (gulls, and turns) gave away the location of topwater feeding whites in fairly shallow water . As I slowly crept into this area so not too spook anything, I noted white bass of all sizes pinning schools of shad up against the surface and feeding heavily on them there. I rearmed everyone with different rods and reels equipped with MAL Heavy lures with chartreuse tails and put everyone to work casting out horizontally, and using a modified sawtooth method to bring the lures back. By “modified”, I mean I did not have them open the bail to allow the lure to sink quickly because that was not an issue in this fairly shallow water.

I should note that Gary and Rachel are very good temperate bass anglers, spending most of their time on Lake Buchanan after whites, hybrid, and full-blooded stripers.  Gary likes to experiment, and, on this trip he brought a bait normally used for deadsticking (a jighead with soft plastic) and used it whenever everyone else was using slabs vertically.  This larger bait which hangs horizontally got, on average, larger white bass, but, also invited missed strikes as smaller fish still struck at it, so he wound up landing fewer fish when using that tactic.  Despite the difference in bait, the presentation (“smoking” it past suspended fish or up and away from bottom-oriented fish) remained essentially the same.
Over about 1.75 hours’ time, this aggressive feeding behavior continued, allowing us to tally a catch of 106 additional fish before leaving this bite behind as fish pushed out of shallow water due to brightening conditions. From this point on, the bite got softer and softer.
Despite finding groups of fish, we could only keep them teased up enough to strike for a few minutes before they lost interest altogether. This happened three times at two different areas and finally, around 11:30, we called it a good morning with exactly 178 fish landed.

RESULTS:  178 fish, all caught and released

 

TUTORIAL VIDEO ON HOW TO DO “SLOW SMOKING”: Click here for tutorial

TUTORIAL VIDEO ON HOW TO FISH AN MAL LURE USING THE SAWTOOTH METHOD: Click here for tutorial 

 

LURES USED SUCCESSFULLY ON THIS TRIP: Silver, 3/4 oz. Bladed Hazy Eye Slabs and MAL Heavy Lures with chartreuse tails. Find all MAL Lures and Hazy Eye Slabs here: https://whitebasstools.com/

 

OBSERVATIONS:

  1. Threadfin shad spawn continues.
  2. Helpful bird activity witnessed around 8:15, which led to about 1.75 hours of successful fishing in the area the birds indicated.

 

LATEST WATER TEMPERATURE PROFILE:

This is the most up-to-date water temperature profile for Lake Belton, measured with a FishHawk TD device around 6:55AM on Tuesday, 15 April…

0 feet 68.4F
5 feet 68.4F
10 feet 67.4F
15 feet 65.9F
20 feet 65.1F
25 feet 64.3F
30 feet 63.5F
35 feet 62.6F
40 feet 61.9F
45 feet 60.0F
50 feet 59.2F
55 feet 58.2F
60 feet 58.0F

This was the previous water temperature profile for Lake Belton, measured with a FishHawk TD device around 7:20AM on Thursday, 10 April…

0 feet 62.9F
5 feet 63.1F
10 feet 62.9F
15 feet 62.9F
20 feet 62.9F
25 feet 68.2F
30 feet 62.6F
35 feet 61.4F
40 feet 60.6F
45 feet 59.4F
50 feet 59.4F
55 feet 59.0F
60 feet 58.0 F

WEATHER DATA:

Start Time: 7:15A

End Time: 11:30A

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 64F

Elevation: 3.22′ low

Water Surface Temp: 68.4F on the surface.

Wind Speed & Direction:  SSE6-9 for about 90 minutes, then shifting S and ramping up to 13-16 thereafter

Sky Condition: Increasing thin, grey cloud cover all AM going from 30% to 100%

Moon Phase: Waning gibbous moon at 88% illumination.

GT = 105

 

Wx SNAPSHOT: 

 

 

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

Area vic 676 – 12 fish on Hazy Eye Slabs

Area vic B0074G  – 38 fish on Hazy Eye Slabs

Area vic B0391G to B0166C – 68 fish fish on MAL Heavy Lures

Area vic 031 – 18 fish fish on MAL Heavy Lures

Area vic B0191C – 7 fish on Hazy Eye Slabs
Area vic B0310G (2 hops) – 35 fish on Hazy Eye Slabs

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