This past Friday morning I met Mrs. Tina Merker and her three children, Kaley (13), Candice (10), and Benny (6) on Belton Lake for the 2015 season’s 12th SKIFF Program fishing trip.

The Merker’s eldest daughter, Kaley, took this long-bodied 20 inch hybrid on topwater.

The Merker’s middle child, Candice, boated this just-legal 18″ hybrid striper on a cork rig worked across the surface.

Little brother Benny took this 19 inch hybrid on cork rig worked on top; and he worked up a sweat landing it.  That’s a lot of hybrid for a little guy!

The children’s father, U.S. Army First Sergeant Benjamin Merker, is currently stationed at Camp Casey, South Korea.  He is the senior non-commissioned officer in a forward support company working with a field artillery unit in support of the 1st Cavalry Division.  He has served for 18 years.  Mrs. Tina Merker is no stranger to leadership, either — she serves as the leader of her husband’s unit’s Family Readiness Group (FRG) which offers grassroots support and disseminates information to the families “back home” while their soldiers are away.

With the lunar cycle right on the new (dark) moon today, topwater action was strong and lasted a long while, aided by a bit of wind and a bit of cloud cover.  All three kids managed to land 5 fish each during the topwater bite as I cast their lines for them and let them retrieve their baits through the frenzied action on the surface.

After the topwater action died, we enjoyed another full hour of solid downrigging action which tapered to nil by around 9:30.  At that time we went up shallow and panfished for sunfish, small bass, and blacktail shiners for about a half-hour.  We closed out the trip working slabs vertically through suspended white bass and, in the last 30 minutes, took our fish count from 47 to 71 as the girls really got the hang of working the slabs and caught fish after fish as I worked with Benny to chip in a few of our own.

During this trip both Benny and Candice earned their “First Fish Award” from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Dept.  Each landed a just-legal hybrid striper as the first fish of their lifetime.

SKIFF (Soldiers’ Kids Involved in Fishing Fun) trips are provided free of charge to families whose children are separated from a parent due to that parent’s military service, thanks to the Austin Fly Fishers and a network of supportive individuals, organizations, and companies from all over the U.S. All it takes is a phone call from a parent to me at 254-368-7411 to reserve a date. SKIFF is open to children in elementary and middle school, as well as teens in high school.
TALLY = 71 FISH, all caught and released
TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 6:40a

End Time: 10:45a

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 79F

Water Surface Temp: 87-88F

Wind Speed & Direction: SSE9-11

Sky Conditions: 80% thin grey cloud cover under a fair sky; dissipating to 10% gradually over the span of the trip

Note: Lake has dropped 0.01 feet in the last 24 hours and now stands at 594.27 above sea level, with 594.00 being full pool

Other: GT= 0

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 084 topwater for 1st hour of the trip

**Area 302/1070 downrigging for 2nd hour of the trip

**Area 492 panfishing

**Area 1577 smoking slabs late; popcorn white bass action visible

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

Salado, TX

www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

This (toasty) Texas evening, I met up with Mike and Lauren Duque of Walburg, TX, targeting white bass and hybrid striped bass on Belton Lake.

As we downrigged for suspended white bass, we came up with a bit of a surprise — this channel catfish decided to dine on one of our metal Pet Spoons.

Six different times over the course of our trip we boated “triples” in which 3 fish were caught on the same rod at the same time using umbrella rigs.

As best they could recall, Mike and Lauren had not fished together since she was a 10-year-old girl.  She is now 21 and in her senior year at Tarleton State University, studying physical therapy.  I’d say they were overdue.

Mike, his wife, and Lauren all live on a ranch where they raise a couple of different kinds of livestock when Mike is not tending to his career as a medical professional focused on kidney health at Scott & White Hospital.  Growing up, Lauren raised pigs for show, so, being interested in most all things “animal”, I listened with interest as they told many neat tales of their animals and their antics.

On the fishing front, things got off to a slow start (as is typical for evening trip) and the bite steadily built in intensity right up to the topwater feeding climax at and just after sunset.  We began by downrigging and did very well on high-riding suspended fish just 12-14 feet below the surface in 25 or so feet of water.  We regularly landed doubles, and, on 6 occasions, landed triples.  Despite all the catching, whenever Mike had even a single small fish shake loose, he’d quip, “You little turd!”, then buckle right back down and try for another one.

We caught a bunch of fish with many smaller whites in the mix, so, around 7:30pm, with 55 fish already landed, Mike and Lauren were willing to roll the dice and move to another are in hopes of catching some larger fish.

This gamble paid off, as not only did the average size of the fish we encountered increase upon arrival, this area also afforded us an opportunity to catch fish on topwater as the sun set.

When all was said and done, the Duque’s landed 91 fish.  I’d say they definitely made up for some lost time.

TALLY = 91 FISH, all caught and released

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 4:45p

End Time:  8:45p

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start:  100.8F

Water Surface Temp:  88-89F

Wind Speed & Direction: Light NNW breeze 7-9mph

Sky Conditions:  Cloudless fair skies.

Note: Lake has dropped 0.01 feet in the last 24 hours and now stands at 594.27 above sea level, with 594.00 being full pool

Other: GT= 40

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 788 slow action on downriggers

**Area 192/376 excellent downrigging action for high, suspended fish

**Area 929/1129 downriggers

**Area 024 began downrigging, transitioning to bladebaits, and ending with topwater as fish pushed bait shallow.

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

Salado, TX

www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

This past Thursday morning I met Mrs. Nicole Tyra and her 5-year-old son, Cadyn Tyra, and Mrs. Bridget Strickland and her 9-year-old daughter, Kayla Jones, out at Belton Lake for the 2015 season’s 11th SKIFF Program fishing trip.

Cadyn Tyra landed our biggest fish of the trip today, a 3 1/8 pound blue catfish.  Although he was all for catching it, he wasn’t so sure about holding it thereafter!! Thanks for doing the dirty work, Mom!

Kayla landed this white bass early in our trip, earning her a TPWD “First Fish Award”.

Cadyn’s dad, U.S. Army Specialist Nick Tyra is currently stationed at Camp Hovey with the 1st Cavalry Division in South Korea.  Kayla’s dad, Sergeant Terrence Strickland, is in the same unit and at the same post as SPC Tyra where both men repair military vehicles.

Unfortunately, Nicole’s babysitter overslept, so we got off to a bit of a late start and missed the low-light topwater bite, but enjoyed about an hour’s worth of downrigging for larger white bass, just-legal and short hybrid striped bass, and 2 blue catfish.  As that action tapered off, we made stops at 3 different areas to fish with bait for panfish up shallow, affording the kids an opportunity to catch several species of sunfish, small largemouth and smallmouth bass, and blacktail shiners.  We ended the day on top of a school of very cooperative white bass in about 27 feet of water which responded well to a “smoking” presentation as we used lead slabs to catch them.

Kayla earned her Texas Parks and Wildlife Dept. First Fish Award on this trip when she landed the first fish of her life and of the trip, a 12″ white bass.  Cadyn took big fish honor with a 3 1/8 pound blue catfish.

SKIFF (Soldiers’ Kids Involved in Fishing Fun) trips are provided free of charge to families whose children are separated from a parent due to that parent’s military service, thanks to the Austin Fly Fishers and a network of supportive individuals, organizations, and companies from all over the U.S. All it takes is a phone call from a parent to me at 254-368-7411 to reserve a date. SKIFF is open to children in elementary and middle school, as well as teens in high school.
TALLY = 51 FISH, all caught and released
TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 6:50a

End Time: 10:35a

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 78F

Water Surface Temp: 87-88F

Wind Speed & Direction: NNW7-8

Sky Conditions: ~15% thin white cloud cover on a fair blue sky.

Note: Lake has dropped 0.01 feet in the last 24 hours and now stands at 594.27 above sea level, with 594.00 being full pool

Other: GT= 0

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 085/812 downrigging early

**Area 492 panfishing

**Area 498 panfishing

**Area 166 panfishing

**Area 154/1576 smoking slabs late

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

Salado, TX

www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

This morning I met up with Ed Hughes, his daughter, Jackie Cooper, and Jackie’s husband, Darrien Cooper, targeting white bass and hybrid striped bass on Belton Lake.

This is a more clear StructureScan shot of that same school of white bass — you can actually count each “rice grain” image of each fish and see (on the lower left corner of the screen) the “streaking” effect made by those fish rising rapidly off the bottom to inspect the commotion made by their school mates.

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Needless to say, everyone caught a bunch of white bass today!!!  We stopped at 75 when the sun broke through and Ed didn’t want to push his luck in the heat any longer.  We had just a few hybrid and one blue cat mixed in, but the vast majority of our catch today was white bass.

Ed is now 89 years old.  He’s a veteran of 3 wars:  WWII, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War.  He lived through the Great Depression, and got his start in the military in the 1940’s flying in the Army Air Corps and stuck it out for over 30 years in the military as a pilot flying all kinds of fixed-wing aircraft.  He golfs and shoots skeet every week and keeps up with his 86 year young wife, Jo.  The Cooper’s traveled in 18 hours from near Vidalia, Georgia, to visit, and our fishing trip was high on the list of things to do while in town.

We agreed to meet at 6:20am so as not to miss a bit of any early, low-light bite that might develop.  Of course, Ed and the gang were parked at the Corps of Engineer gate well before I arrived at the “gate open” time of 6:00am.  The extra time allowed us to get acquainted, get the spinning reel handles on the correct side for each person, and figure out our “battle stations” for where each person would be situated if topwater action erupted.

Not long after first light, I used my spotting scope to find some light topwater action generated by white bass.  We all threw Cork Rigs and got a fish on every well-placed cast while the action lasted.  Following this, there was a bit of a lull, which was to be expected given that the cloud cover eliminated the sudden brightening of the sky caused by sunrise.  After about 30 minutes, the skies brightened sufficiently through the clouds to trigger another topwater feed.  We stayed with these fish as long as they stayed on top, and then followed them with downriggers once they sounded, picking up only another 5 fish before this large school dissipated.

We then experienced yet another lull during which I decided to move us to a new location.  Upon arrival, I spotted frequent but scattered schools of white bass along the bottom in 32 feet of water.  We successfully downrigged for these, but found most to be small white bass.  A 3-armed umbrella rig with Pet Spoons did the trick.

It was now around 9:40, and this bite seemed to be dwindling, so, we headed to a new area.  As I idled in observing the surface for any sign of fish, I consistently saw fish at 21-22 feet beneath the surface in slightly deeper water.  No sooner did we get the downriggers deployed and land a double, than the sonar lit up big time showing fish blanketing the bottom in numbers that I have not seen since the flooding disrupted things.  I tossed a buoy, got back over these fish, and we proceeded to wear them out on slabs until Ed had enough of the heat and humidity.  By this time the trio had worked the tally up to exactly 75 fish — it was all I could do to take the fish off their hooks and keep an accurate count on my clicker.  No jumbos in the white bass catch today, but just having action from start to finish on a 4-hour trip is a great thing.

Mr. Hughes, thank you for your service to the nation!!

TALLY = 75 FISH, all caught and released

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 6:30a

End Time:  10:20a

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start:  76F

Water Surface Temp:  87-88F

Wind Speed & Direction: Light NNW breeze 3-5mph

Sky Conditions:  Humid with 80+% low grey cloud cover.

Note: Lake has dropped 0.03 feet in the last 24 hours and now stands at 594.32 above sea level, with 594.00 being full pool

Other: GT= 15

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 1125/794 topwater white bass

**Area 302/1069 started with topwater and mopped up with downriggers

**Area 929/1129 downriggers

**Area 1576 smoking for white bass

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

Salado, TX

www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

This (very hot) August afternoon, I met Mrs. April Walker and her 6 year old son, Austin, at Stillhouse Hollow for an evening of fishing.

April, herself a veteran of the U.S. Navy, met her husband while he, too, was in the Navy along the Mississippi Gulf Coast.  He later joined the U.S. Army where he now works with the Patriot Missile System.

Young Austin threw me a bit of a curveball when, at dockside he expressed fears about getting into and going out on a boat.

I did a bit of quick thinking and came up with  a way for us to still enjoy fishing without necessarily having to go very far by water.  Armed with bream poles, we targeted smaller fish using the abundant, flooded shoreline cover as hiding spots.  We found a variety of fish willing to take our presentation of worms suspended below a slip float, including bluegill sunfish, green sunfish, largemouth bass, and blacktail shiners.  Thanks in large part to his mom’s insistent nudging, he took rod in hand and did quite well at catching fish after putting his concerns about boating to the side.

Wanting to see her son overcome his fear of the boat and water, April again did some “insistent nudging” and presented Austin with some “limited options”.  Option 1:  Take a brief boat ride to overcome your fears and then go back home at a time of your choosing, or, Option 2: There was no second option.

So, Austin “chose” Option 1, overcame his fear of water, and remained very calm as we cruised at about 11 miles per hour from one boat ramp to the next closest boat ramp.  By this time, Austin had amassed a nice catch of 46 fish.  So, I challenged him to catch 4 more fish once we reached the other boat ramp so he could finish us off with an even 50 fish.  He took me up on that challenge, and quickly and easily boated 4 more fish with his new-found knowledge of angling, and then we were off on our return trip to the boat ramp from which we began our trip.

On our return trip, we went a bit faster and Austin seemed a bit less concerned about the situation than he did on the first leg of our journey.

True to her word, once we got back to the ramp, April let Austin decide what he’d like to do.  With the novelty of the one type of fishing that we did wearing off, the sun taking its toll, and the snack supply running low, Austin chose to conclude the trip at around the 2-hour mark (which is not out of the ordinary for 6-year olds).

As we walked up the hill to the parking lot together, I asked Austin if he liked fishing.  He said he did, just not from a boat.

To enroll in SKIES Unlimited activities, children must be registered with CYSS at Building 121 on 761st Tank Destroyer Avenue (right across from the Chili’s restaurant). There is no charge for registration; parents must bring an ID that shows their affiliation with the military, the child’s shot records, and the report from a recent physical exam.  While the SKIES Unlimited programs are not free, many military families are eligible for sizeable credits toward SKIES Unlimited activities. There is a $300 “Army Strong” credit available to each child when their parent is deployed.

TALLY = 50 FISH, all caught and released

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 4:45p

End Time:  6:45p

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start:  77F

Water Surface Temp:  88F

Wind Speed & Direction: NNW6-7

Sky Conditions:  High, clear, bright skies with some building clouds to the west

Note: Lake has dropped 0.19 feet in the last 24 hours and now stands at 621.81 above sea level, with 622.00 being full pool

Other: GT= 0

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 667 slipfloats for panfish

**Area 456 slipfloats for panfish

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

Salado, TX

www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

This morning I met Mrs. Silvia Taylor and her two children, 10-year old Mariella, and 6-year old Adrian, for a morning fishing trip on Belton Lake.  Neither child had ever been on a boat nor fished before.

Mariella won the big fish contest by a landslide today with this 4+ pound hybrid striped bass which hit a shallow running bait not long after sunrise.

Adrian had all he could handle when this hybrid ripped his line out of the downrigger release clip and headed for deep water.

Mary and Adrian’s father, Sergeant First Class Randy Taylor, is currently on an unaccompanied tour to South Korea.  An “unaccompanied tour” means a soldier’s family is not permitted to be with him or her, and therefore must remain stateside for the duration of a soldier’s absence.  Randy and Silvia first met while Randy was stationed in the Bavarian region of Germany several years ago.

This morning we witnessed some strong, albeit short-lived, topwater action in which a mix of white bass and hybrid striped bass of all sizes forced baitfish to the surface and fed upon them very aggressively, thus creating enough commotion so as to be seen and heard.  We got right into the thick of it and the kids stayed hooked up to fish for as long as the action lasted.  Due to their inexperience, we downrigged through this action instead of spending a lot of time trying to learn to cast into the action.  In the long run, we landed more fish thanks to this decision.

After the strong topwater bite ended (at about the time a mild, dry front arrived from the NW), we moved on to panfishing in shallow water, catching several varieties of sunfish, small largemouth bass, and blacktail shiners from two separate locations.

When the novelty of panfishing wore off for Adrian, and as the temperature rapidly crept up, we finished out the trip by downrigging once again, which provided us with a nice bumper crop of white bass.

In all, the kids boated 63 fish this morning and both earned a Texas Parks and Wildlife Dept. “First Fish Award”.

SKIFF (Soldiers’ Kids Involved in Fishing Fun) trips are provided free of charge to families whose children are separated from a parent due to that parent’s military service, thanks to the Austin Fly Fishers and a network of supportive individuals from all over the U.S. All it takes is a phone call from a parent to me at 254-368-7411 to reserve a date. SKIFF is open to children in elementary and middle school, as well as teens in high school.
TALLY = 63 FISH, all caught and released
TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 6:30a

End Time: 10:30a

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 76F

Water Surface Temp: 86-87F

Wind Speed & Direction: NW8-9 beginning around 7:40a

Sky Conditions: No cloud cover under the influence of a mild cool front moving into the area right around 7:45a

Note: Lake has dropped 0.03 feet in the last 24 hours and now stands at 594.35 above sea level, with 594.00 being full pool

Other: GT= 0

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 813/133 topwater & downrigging early

**Area 492 panfishing

**Area 166 panfishing

**Area 687/1081 downrigging late

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

Salado, TX

www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

This morning I met Dr. Lurry Leavelle and his wife, Mrs. Donna Leavelle, at Belton Lake for a morning of white bass and hybrid striped bass fishing.

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Lurry and Donna landed these just-legal 18″ hybrid just seconds apart.  The two fish came from the same school and both fell for slabs worked vertically near bottom.

The Leavelle’s adult children had presented Lurry and Donna with a fishing gift certificate for Christmas, which we’d hoped to redeem in the late spring/early summer, but flooding prevented that and we rescheduled to this date.  Lurry is Vietnam-era U.S. Army veteran and a semi-retired Ob/Gyn doctor at Scott and White.  He and Donna have been in the central Texas area since the early 1970’s.

This has been a particularly tough summer, and although Belton is getting some bad press lately on the Texas Fishing Forum, in the local newspapers, and amongst bass tournament anglers, I’m still seeing a lot of fish and a lot of bait; getting those fish to bite, however, has been a real trick.  On numerous occasions over the past two weeks I’ve seen instances where large schools of white bass and/or hybrid stripers were holding on or near bottom in what is normally a feeding posture, yet, when I’ve run baits through them both vertically and horizontally, they simply refuse to respond, or, if they respond, the response is far less aggressive than is typically encountered during summertime conditions.

Such was the case today.  I located abundant schools of fish, yet, for all the effort we put in both downrigging horizontally and jigging vertically, it seems that we just barely got the attention of a fraction of the fish we encountered.

Our best results came in about a 60 minute window between 9:30 and 10:30am in the vicinity of Area 812/085/814.  During this time, fish which I’d already located turned on to a greater degree than they had since I’d located them.  This bite coincided with a sudden increase of wind speed and a directional shift from S to SSW.  As the wind blew, the fish turned on, affording us 50% of our catch in about 20% of our total fishing time.  As these fish ( a mix of hybrid and white bass) turned on, we jigged vertically until no fish showed on sonar, then short-hopped over top of more fish until finally the fish were no longer well-congregated and we changed over to a downrigging approach to “mop up” until the bite just died here altogether.

After that, I checked 4 other areas, finding small 5-8″ white bass surface feeding regularly in the vicinity of Area 1081.  These fish readily took a small silver slab while on top, however, there were no larger white bass or hybrid “ghosting” underneath these school, only small fish.  We caught a few while observing for larger quarry, but departed once it became clear there were no bigger fish in this area.

By 11:15a the morning bite had played out and we decided to wrap up our morning trip with a total of 21 fish landed.

TALLY = 21 FISH, all caught and released

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 6:30a

End Time:  11:20a

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start:  77F

Water Surface Temp:  86.3F

Wind Speed & Direction: S8-9, briefly turning SSW11-13 from 9:30 to 10:30, then settling back to S7-8

Sky Conditions:  A bit more humid today with ~20% cloud cover.

Note: Lake has dropped 0.03 feet in the last 24 hours and now stands at 594.81above sea level, with 594.00 being full pool

Other: GT= 20

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 812/085/814 vertical jigging and downrigging for bottom-oriented white bass and hybrid striped bass

**Area 1081 small topwater white bass

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

Salado, TX

www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

On the evening of Friday, July 31st, I had the pleasure of fishing with Mr. Karl Smith and his daughter, Monique.

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Karl’s daughter, Monique, a student at Cameron University in Kansas, got this hybrid early in our trip jigging with a slab.

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In addition to the hybrid which cooperated pretty well, the white bass were also on the prowl this evening.

About a week and a half ago. Mr. Karl Smith gave me a call wanting to do some fishing with his daughter before she heads back to college for the fall semester.  Karl is retired military and now works as a civilian auditor in the III Corps Building on Fort Hood.

Although my preference is to fish mornings due to the heat, the calendar was too full to get a morning trip in before Monique had to head north, so, we planned an evening outing instead.

We got going at 5:30pm and found fish right away.  These fish were among the shallowest, yet still bottom-oriented fish I’ve found thus far this summer.  Most of our fish came out of only 17-21 feet of water tonight.

I normally begin evening trips with downriggers, as the bite is usually soft, and then builds towards sunset, but, this evening we found fish heavily schooled together and up off the bottom by a few inches instead of just laying low, so, we tried slabbing for them, and it worked well.  We picked up our first 5-6 fish via slabbing (both white bass and hybrid) before the fish lost interest and we turned to downrigging to provide success.

The mild cold front definitely had a bit of a negative influence on the fishing, as both the morning and evening fish count was down a bit, and neither morning or evening trips today provided any fishable topwater action (which is also fairly normal during the 3 days either side of the full moon).

The most intense action came from 7:35 to 8:05 with fish and bait both moving shallow and “loosening up” a bit and biting more frequently and aggressively than over the previous few hours.

We wound up with a total of 25 fish landed for our efforts, and a good chance that I’ll see Karl back with his 14 year old daughter soon.

TALLY = 25 FISH, all caught and released

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 5:30p

End Time: 8:50p

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 99F

Water Surface Temp: 88.1F

Wind Speed & Direction: NNE9-12

Sky Conditions: 30% cloud cover under influence of a mild cold front that came in overnight.

Note: Lake has dropped 0.06 feet in the last 24 hours and now stands at 594.93 above sea level, with 594.00 being full pool

Other: GT= 20

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 1593 slabbing worked early, and downrigging worked throughout

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

Salado, TX

www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

On the evening of Tuesday, 28 July I met Pastor Doug Lindley and his youngest of four children, Michael (age 16), for a few hours of fishing targeting white bass and hybrid striped bass on Belton Lake.

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Michael Lindley of Burnet, TX, with the 15.25″ Belton Lake white bass that earned him a TPWD “Big Fish Award”.

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Fisher of fish and men, Pastor Doug Lindley, with our largest fish of the trip, an 18.50″ hybrid striped bass.

Doug serves as the pastor at the First Baptist Church of Burnet, well-known for the “Main Street Bethlehem” production the church puts on each Christmas holiday season, turning several blocks of Burnet, TX, into a re-creation of the Holy Land around 1 A.D.

Thanks to the consistent high pressure we’ve experienced due to a high pressure “dome” now firmly in place over Texas driving all other weather around it, the fishing, both morning and evening, has been the most consistent I’ve seen since all of the flooding and subsequent draw down really threw fish and fishermen for a loop as late spring turned to early summer.

We got lines in the water around 5:30pm and initially relied on a downrigging approach to coax more active individual fish out of bottom-hugging schools of fairly lethargic fish.  This tactic worked well and allowed us to cover a lot of terrain very effectively while at the same time getting to keep a close eye on sonar for heavy schools of fish which might be susceptible to other techniques.  Indeed, we found several nice schools of fish numbering perhaps 30-80 individuals, but, each time we stopped downrigging to either cast bladebaits to them or vertically jig over them, the fish failed to respond in the least.

On one of our downrigging passes, I sighted a tight cluster of fish on sonar and gave it 5-8 second for our baits to cover over that area the boat had just passed.  Michael’s rod went off with what I could tell was a larger fish because the fish popped the line out of the release clip by its own strength (most smaller fish require manual clearing of the line from the release clip).  When we got that fish to boatside, Michael had landed one of the larger white bass I’ve seen come out of Belton in several years — a nice 15.25 inch fish that was quite plump.  This earned him a Texas Parks and Wildlife Dept. “Big Fish Award”, available to anglers who land fish exceeding set threshold lengths on a species-by-species basis.  The threshold for white bass is 15.00″.

SInce our attempts at working baits vertically and horizontally fell short, we kept right on with what was working.  All this time I was hoping for (even anticipating) a nice finale to the evening by fish feeding on topwater, given all the gamefish, bait, and the disposition of both in the time leading up to 7:45 to 8:00pm when the low-light conditions typically spur a final feed before dark.

All seemed to be falling in place nicely; in the 7 o’clock hour I witnessed shad begin to pop out of the water here and there acting nervous, and from time to time small schools of white bass would erupt on the surface but then quickly sound.

By 8:10pm, I spotted the first large, sustained schools of fish feeding on topwater and quickly got us to them.  I though all heck was about to break loose.  We changed over to topwater rigs and enjoyed a 10 minute flurry allowing us to boat 9 more fish in addition to the 21 we’d already caught.  During this time, fish drove bait to the surface, but really didn’t stay on the surface — it just wasn’t a strong feed.  By the time we saw and heard the last fish splash around 8:20p, and with plenty of light left, the fishing just died.  Our finale had kind of fizzled — but, that is the nature of fishing.

I’ve said many times before, if we (mankind) had ever figured out all that drives fish to do what they do, we would have exploited them into extinction long ago.  I’m glad there is still a bit of mystery to it!

TALLY = 30 FISH, all caught and released

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 5:30p

End Time:  8:50p

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start:  97F

Water Surface Temp:  86.0F

Wind Speed & Direction: SSE9-11

Sky Conditions:    <10% clouds on a fair sky.

Note: Lake has dropped 0.08 feet in the last 24 hours and now stands at 595.05 above sea level, with 594.00 being full pool

Other: GT= 10

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 788/163 downrigging

**Area 183 topwater action

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

Salado, TX

www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com