Day: April 18, 2025

Seventy Fish and a Hat

by Bob Maindelle

CLIENTS:  This morning, Friday, April 18, I fished with a crew of four including three generations of Van Ripers, and one of their relatives. Joining me was George, Geoff, and Greg Van Riper, and Matt Bouton. George is a retired US Army aviation officer (Viet Nam era helicopter pilot), Jeff is a high school math teacher in the Killeen school district, as well as a golf coach there, Matt is in his junior year studying economics at Texas A&M, and Greg is working his way through public school.

DATE: Friday, 18 April 2025 (AM)

NEXT OPEN DATE FOR FISHING:  02 June (AM) 

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

 

PHOTO CAPTION: From left:  George and Geoff Van Riper, Matt Bouton, and Greg Van Riper (Geoff’s son), all with some of the white bass they landed under high wind conditions using mainly live bait with a few bouts of slab fishing thrown in when the conditions looked right on sonar.

 

PHOTO CAPTION: Geoff Van Riper came up with our largest hybrid of the trip.  This one struck a large, live threadfin shad in 31 feet of water.  It weighed 4.75 pounds.

WHERE WE FISHED: Lake Belton

SUMMARY OF HOW WE FISHED:

The 800 pound gorilla in the room today was the wind.  The wind situation was such that I was not sure we were even going to be able to get this trip in safely until the mid-week wind forecast throttled back on the forecast windspeeds and I decided to at least give it a try. The wind did force us to change our meeting location, and prohibited me from fishing the productive areas I had been fishing for the last several weeks.

The wind simply impacted everything negatively — from getting from Point A to Point B, to getting baits in the water efficiently, to detecting bites  — but, we persisted!

We started off the day on a windblown point, picked up six fish by working three-quarter ounce, silver, Bladed Hazy Eye Slabs vertically, but as soon as the sun got above the horizon and began to warm the atmosphere, the wind ratcheted it up to over 16-17 mph and we had to come off that exposed area .

I wound up fishing the remainder of the trip in the Leon River arm and relied mainly on live bait to get the job done.

When all was said and done, this crew of four landed exactly 70 fish, including white bass, largemouth, bass, blue catfish, and hybrid striped bass. At each of the several locations we fished, I noted something in common. That was that quality white bass were most routinely caught off bottom but were very lackadaisical, whereas we also found very small white bass suspended and zipping around, looking for the source of the noise coming from the splasher. A few times when I felt Greg needed a change of pace to keep him engaged, I had him work a slab vertically when everyone else stuck with bait, and during those times, he pulled up small white bass from the upper half of the water column which chased his slab, as we observed together on Garmin LiveScope.

We wrapped up at 11:45 and I knew the ride back was going to be a wet challenge.  We were doing great until Geoff’s hat (an Alamo hat with sentimental value) blew off.  We took on some spray in the maneuvering required to get back to the hat before it sank, but, other than that, we got back to the dock unscathed.
Happy Easter — Christ has risen!

RESULTS:  70 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. Find all MAL Lures and Hazy Eye Slabs here: https://whitebasstools.com/

 

OBSERVATIONS:

  1. Threadfin shad spawn continues.
  2. No helpful bird activity.
  3. High SE winds prohibited travel on exposed areas of the lake today.

 

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: 11:45A

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 68F

Elevation: 3.27′ low

Water Surface Temp: 67.6F on the surface.

Wind Speed & Direction:  SSE16-20 all morning

Sky Condition: 100% thin, grey cloud cover for 3 hours, then clearing to a white, hazy sky

Moon Phase: Waning gibbous moon at 81% illumination.

GT = 55

 

Wx SNAPSHOT: 

 

 

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

Area vic 0363 – 6 fish on Hazy Eye Slabs

Area vic B0085C – 28 fish primarily on live bait

Area vic 0181 – 25 fish primarily on live bait
Area vic B0079C (2 hops) – 11 fish on live shad

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