This past Fourth of July Monday morning I fished Belton Lake with Mike Salas, his wife Sandy, and their twin 8-yearl-old girls, Sophia and Grace, all of El Paso, Texas. Mike and his family traveled in from Waco to visit Sandy’s sister and her brother-in-law, Steven. Steven also joined us this morning.

Mike Salas with his twin 8-year-old girls, Sophia (blue life jacket) and Grace (red life jacket) with one of the 30 fish we landed today on downriggers and live bait.

Mrs. Sandy Salas held her own today, showing one of the larger hybrid stripers we landed this morning.

Uncle Steven chipped in with a nice hybrid of his own later in the trip.
This morning’s atmosphere was turbulent, with gusty winds, gray cloud cover, and lightning flickering at the tops of thunder heads up north of us in the Waco area. Turbulent conditions made for tough bait netting this morning, and I took it right down to the wire throwing the net up until just minutes before I was due to meet Mike and his family at the boat ramp.

Once we made introductions and I went over a few safety conciderations, I discovered neither of the girls had ever caught a fish before. I told the family that landing the girls first fish was job number one. Under gray and fairly dark skies, we headed for the fishing grounds.

Just as there was enough light out to see, I begin to spot fish feeding on the surface among the fairly heavy waves and white caps. This definitely called for a downrigging approach, so we put in both downriggers and in moments had Grace hooked up to a double, consisting of a small white bass and a keeper hybrid of 18.5 inches. Minutes later, Sophia hooked up with a 10 inch white bass, and just like that both girls had landed the first fish of their lives. After this initial feed, the bite fell off quickly as the fish headed to the bottom and dispersed. We continued picking up a few fish in this general area over the next hour and 45 minutes, until moving to a new area with a dozen fish boated up to this point.

As we headed to our second spot, I looked things over with sonar and found fish very near the bottom, and intermingled amidst the submerged brush now standing in 25+ feet of water. I decided to go with a live bait approach and suspend the baits just above the brush. This worked well when the fish were aggressive right after we found them, allowing us to put seven fish in the boat including several nice hybrid stripers, along with some white bass

Once the fish settled down, the bites got very tentative, causing more missed strikes than we had hook ups, and causing a lot of torn and killed baits. Seeing this development, I decided to move out just a bit further and try downrigging again while keeping the baits just above the submerged brush. This worked pretty well as it allowed us to cover a lot of ground, getting our baits in front of the few still active fish among the majority of an active fish. We wound up with another 11 fish boated this way, including two triples (three fish caught on one rod at the same time, using a  that came on the three-armed umbrella rigs we were using baited with Pet Spoons.

 

TALLY = 30 fish, all caught and released

 

Wx Snapshot:

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 6:30a

End Time:  11:30a

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 82F

Water Surface Temp:  85.2F

Wind Speed & Direction:  SSE12-13

Sky Conditions:  100% low, grey, murky cloud cover until around 11:00am, then thinning and brightening, but still with 100% cloud cover.

Water Level: 24.03 feet high and falling ~0.3 feet per day

GT = 40

 

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 1746-012 Downrig for low light bite

**Area 1771 – live bait for whites/hybrid/bluecat

** Area 1778-1771-1770 for whites/short hybrid

 

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

Website: www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

E-mail: Bob@HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/bobmaindelle

This past Saturday morning, July 2, I fished at Walter E. Long Reservoir with Whitney and Andrew Hartman of Sugar Land, Texas.  This couple met at college (Oregon State University) and now both work in the insurance business in the Houston area.

Twice this morning Whitney and Andrew scored a triple-header with one fish biting on Whitney’s 3-armed umbrella rig, and two fish biting on Andrew’s 3-armed umbrella rig.

Whitney landed our largest hybrid of the trip.  This hybrid just nipped the 20″ mark and went 3.25 pounds.

Whitney and Andrew are dog lovers, and have five dogs of various sorts and sizes. This couple tries not to travel without the dogs, and so at times, those venues excepting dogs drive the agenda for their long weekends and vacations. So it was for this Fourth of July weekend. The two of them found a rental home on VRBO that not only allowed dogs but was okay with all five of them. Once lodging was established, Whitney did some digging to find out what activities were in the area and came across my website and gave me a call.  This took me down to meet them at Walter E. Long Reservoir (formerly known as Decker Lake).

A funny thing happened as we were getting going.  After covering some safety considerations, I went over how to cast a spinning outfit (which Whitney had not done in about 12 years).  Whitney actually did really well, launching a nice cast on her third attempt, but, her two initial “not so pretty” attempts stuck with her.  As I like to do before each trip, I prayed with the Hartman’s.  As I finished, Whitney asked if I prayed with all my clients, or just the ones who don’t do very well casting!!

We began our fishing trip around 6:30 AM under murky gray skies with a 9 to 11 mph wind already blowing before sunrise. Since I do not fish Walter E. Long regularly, I had to spend a bit more time this morning figuring out where the fish were then if I had been on my “home” lakes of Belton and Stillhouse. We wound up boating only one fish in our first hour and 45 minutes on the water. However, once we found fish, we were able to capitalize on what we found and make up for some lost time.

When we found them, the fish we found were hybrid striped bass in fairly shallow water, suspended between nine and 15 feet over an 18 to 25 foot bottom. The first fish we encountered were suspended in aggressively feeding schools, and as the sun continued to rise higher in the sky and burn off the cloud cover, the fish pushed downward ending up on bottom.

The fish showed a very definite preference for small, horizontally moving baits. In fact, despite the fact that I had ample livebait of various sizes, the fish refused live bait on three separate attempts, and bit only on artificials. The artificial bait they preferred was a small silver Pet Spoon with a white feather dressing, fished on a three-armed umbrella rig.

Using this rig, we landed singles and doubles and put together a total catch of 15 legal hybrid striped bass up to 3.25 pounds until we wrapped up around 11:30 AM.

 

TALLY = 15 fish, all caught and released

 

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 6:30a

End Time:  11:30a

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 77F

Water Surface Temp:  87-89F

Wind Speed & Direction:  ESE11-13

Sky Conditions:  100% low, grey, murky cloud cover until around 9:00am, then quickly clearing to just 30% white clouds on a fair sky.

Water Level: Lake was at full pool.

GT = 105

 

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 1773 downrigging with balls at 12′  for 1 hybrid striper just after sunrise

** Area 1774 – 1775 – 1776 – wolfpack of like-sized hybrid were suspended and working this windblown area and responded well to downrigged Pet Spoons set between 10-14 feet

 

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

Website: www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

E-mail: Bob@HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/bobmaindelle

This past Wednesday morning, June 29, I conducted a “Kids Dish, Too!” trip with Aaron Hall and his 2 youngest children, Lucy and James. Neither Lucy, age 6, nor James, age 5, had ever landed a fish before.

James landed this nice 3.75 pound Belton Lake hybrid striped bass with just a little help from his dad, Aaron.

Lucy landed this hybrid just after sunrise while we were still downrigging, before switching over to live bait.

Aaron works in the anesthesiology department at Baylor – Scott & White hospital, but, after spending some time down here in Texas, is headed back home this summer to Washington State to continue his career near Spokane.  As the trio came down to the water’s edge to meet me, I could tell dad had personally dressed the kids for this trip, seeing how they were both in their pajamas!

Planning on multiple transitions through the course of a 3 to 4 hour trip is a must when working with kids of this age. Even if we were fortunate enough to catch a fish every minute or two, such great action would quickly lose its novelty for kids this young. Knowing this, I planned to downrig this morning, as well as use live bait, search for topwater action, and fish for sunfish up in shallow water. As it turned out, we were able to do all four of these things, and as young as they were, both James and Lucy were able to stay engaged and enjoy the entire four hour or experience.

We began our day with the downriggers in the water trolling Pet Spoons behind a tandem rig and a three-armed umbrella rig set between 18 and 22 feet. This depth has been preferred by gamefish and baitfish all through this extensive flooding on Belton. Once we eliminated some unproductive water and found fish on sonar, we were able to thoroughly work this fish-holding water and put both white bass and keeper hybrid in the boat. Once the sun got more intense, the fish pushed down to the bottom and we prepared to switch over to live bait.

Right about this time, in the same area in which we had been downrigging, some white top water action broke out driven by white bass forcing shad to the surface.  Aaron and I worked together to launch cork rigs beyond the fray, and the kids were able to retrieve the rigs through the fish then hook and land them. This accounted for another several white bass in the three-year class. Once this action died, we picked up where we had left off with live bait.  We fished live shad right near bottom for these increasingly disinterested fish, allowing us to land several more white bass and keeper hybrid.

Of all the techniques I employ, I find the kids stay interested least in live bait fishing, so we did not stick with this very long. The closing chapter of our day consisted of pursuing small, shallow water panfish using worms beneath slip floats. In the closing moments of our trip James and Lucy put a combined seven blacktail shiners and a small sunfish in the boat using this approach. As if on cue, James asked right at 10:15 AM, “Dad, can we go home now?”

For their efforts, James and Lucy boated 29 fish this morning, and each earned at Texas Parks and Wildlife Dept. “First Fish Award”.

TALLY = 29 fish, all caught and released

 

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 6:15a

End Time:  11:45a

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 77F

Water Surface Temp:  85.2F

Wind Speed & Direction:  Variable SSE to SSW 3-4.

Sky Conditions:  Less than 20% white cloud cover on a fair sky.

Water Level: ~25+  feet above full pool with a release of 5,744 cfs ongoing.  Lake is still rising due to even heavier flows out of Lake Proctor upstream from Belton.

GT = 30

 

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 011 to 019 downrigging for white bass and hybrid stripers

** Area 1772 – good results on live shad; 1 hybrid for every 3 mature white bass

**Area 1583 – panfish on redworms up shallow

 

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

Website: www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

E-mail: Bob@HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/bobmaindelle

This past Monday morning, June 27, I fished a daddy-daughter trip with Katie Schulte and her dad, Mike Schulte.

It was daddy-daughter day today!  Katie and Mike Schulte stuck with it through some pretty slow fishing under near-calm conditions this morning and each landed several nice hybrid when all was said and done.

All but one of our fish today came on live bait.  I used a combination of shad, sunfish, and shiners.  None really outperformed the other.
Katie is a Harker Heights High School graduate now entering her senior year at Howard Payne University, where she plays inter-collegiate volleyball. Upon graduation she desires to go into the dental field. Mike is a long-time local builder and real estate appraiser whose business is based in Harker Heights.

A few days before Father’s Day Katie contacted me about doing a trip just for her and her dad, and today was the day she made that happen.

We met up at Belton Lake Park at 6:15a and immediately began keeping an eye out for topwater action, although none appeared this morning. We put downriggers set at between 18 and 22 feet and began patrolling the area where, over the past two weeks, morning action has been solid. Downrigging allows us to catch fish while at the same time searching for large concentrations of fish to tempt with live bait.

The downrigging this morning really did not reveal much, and only yielded one white bass right around 7 AM. I didn’t see enough as we were downrigging to let me know where the bait and gamefish were concentrated, and so once the sun rose we transitioned over to fishing bait. Even the bite on live bait this morning was pretty slow. Most of our fish today came just one at a time with an occasional 2 to 3 fish burst, but nothing more intense than that.

On a number of occasions we saw healthy groupings of game fish, typically between 18 and 25 feet deep, holding in a suspended posture over a deeper bottom. In almost all of these situations, it was very tough despite the number of fish and the fact that they were congregated together, to get a bite going.

Since I had a variety of bait to try, we tried baits of various species and sizes, including large and small threadfin, large and small gizzard shad, large and small sunfish, and large and small shiners, but none seemed to really outperform the other.

I extended our trip by about an hour and a half, and in the end we wound up catching 22 fish with roughly half of those consisting of keeper hybrid. Katie was also quite pleased to land two very stout freshwater drum (also known as gasper gou).

 

Clear, bright, and calm or low-wind conditions as we experienced this morning often diminish results, and today was no exception.  We caught fish, including several solid hybrid stripers, but didn’t knock the ball out of the park this morning.

TALLY = 22 fish, all caught and released

 

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 6:15a

End Time:  11:45a

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 77F

Water Surface Temp:  85.2F

Wind Speed & Direction:  Variable SSE to SSW 3-4.

Sky Conditions:  Less than 20% white cloud cover on a fair sky.

Water Level: ~25+  feet above full pool with a release of 5,744 cfs ongoing.  Lake is still rising due to even heavier flows out of Lake Proctor upstream from Belton.

GT = 30

 

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 009 to 018 with only one white bass caught

** Area 1764 – slow results on bait

**Area 1771 – slow results on bait

**Area 019 to 018 – slow results on bait

 

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

Website: www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

E-mail: Bob@HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/bobmaindelle

This past Saturday afternoon, June 25th, I fished Lake Belton with father-and-son team Jamie and Brennen Kidwell of Harker Heights, Texas.

From left: Jamie and Brennen Kidwell — the blue cats were “cattin’ around” during the early evening and took a liking to our live and cut baits.  We found a large, suspended school of these rascals up to 5 pounds off a blunt point in about 22′ of water.

And then the hybrid stripers and white bass went ballistic for about 60 minutes during a pre-sunset topwater feed.

This trip was kind of a spur of the moment thing, as Brennen will be traveling much of the summer. Given that good old dad still has to go to work each day at the Copperas Cove post office, he decided to do a little something with his son before Brennen’s departure.

We set our meeting time for 4:45 PM. Anticipating nothing short of a zoo at the Belton Park boat ramp, I headed over there at 3 PM to make sure I arrived in a timely fashion to meet these fellows. When I arrived my expectations were fully realized. It was truly a zoo. Regardless, I got launched and was afloat and waiting by the time the fellows arrived.

As is often the case on afternoon trips, the first hour was fairly slow. We picked up only two white bass on downriggers in the first 45 minutes.

I moved us off of a point and saw bait and gamefish holding at about 22 feet over deeper water. Hopeful that these were hybrid striper, I got us set up in a hover over top of these fish using the Ulterra’s i-Pilot feature, and we then got baits suspended just above these suspended fish. The response was nearly instantaneous, but the results were not as expected. As it turned out, this school of fish was not made up of hybrid stripers, it was blue catfish — some up to 5 pounds. Knowing that the time up until around 6:30pm is typically soft fishing this time of year, I kept us on top of these fish knowing that catfish action, especially with quality sized fish, was better than the alternative of picking at fewer white bass using downriggers. So, we stayed over top of these blue catfish until right at 6:30.

At 6:30 I moved us to an area that has been producing hybrid striper both morning and evening consistently for the past several weeks. As I idled over this area slowly while at the same time studying sonar, it was clear that fish were holding at 25 to 26 feet deep over a deeper bottom. Once again, we went with live baits suspended just above these suspended fish, and once again had nearly instantaneous results. We landed a trio of hybrid stripers right off the bat, and then continued to land one at a time over the next roughly 40 minutes. When the action here slowed, I began preparing to move us, and as I brought in the trolling motor and the slap of the waves on the hull ceased as we begin to drift, I heard a most welcome sound. It was the sound of white bass and hybrid striper aggressively chasing young of the year shad across the surface. Top water action had been going well right up until the several days before the full moon, but has been nonexistent up until today ever since the time of the full moon and the several days thereafter.

We finished up our trip with a full hour’s worth of topwater action casting cork rigs with hand tied flies to white bass in the 1 to 2 year class and mainly two- and three-year class hybrid stripers.

We ended up this afternoon’s trip with 59 fish.

TALLY = 59 fish, all caught and released

 

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 4:45p

End Time:  8:45p

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 89F

Water Surface Temp:  83.1F

Wind Speed & Direction:  SSE7-8 the entire trip.

Sky Conditions:  A nice, thin, grey cloud layer kept the direct sun from beaming on us for the entire duration of this evening’s trip.

Water Level: ~24+  feet above full pool with a release of 5,744 cfs ongoing.  Lake is still rising due to even heavier flows out of Lake Proctor upstream from Belton.

GT = 0

 

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 1760-1769   –  downrigging for smaller fish early

** Area 1770 – suspended bluecats for ~ 1 hour

**Area 1763  – live shad fished for suspended fish for ~1 hour ; mainly keeper hybrid

**Area 1641 and up toward the flooded shoreline – topwater action for last hour under grey, humid conditions

 

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

Website: www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

E-mail: Bob@HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/bobmaindelle

This past Saturday morning, June 25th, I fished with Mr. Ray Rudloff, Mr. Mike Turner, and Mr. Dan Caudle. Ray’s wife, Nikki, gave Ray a fishing gift certificate for three, and today was the day they decided to cash it in.

From left: Mike Turner, Dan Caudle, and Ray Rudloff all with keeper hybrid taken seconds apart just minutes after we got our first live baits in the water, and while the sun was still low in the morning sky, obscured by low, grey clouds.

Ray Rudloff with our largest fish of the trip, tilting the scales just past the 5 pound mark.

To say finding live bait was tough would be quite an understatement. I spent a solid 2.25 hours continuously throwing my cast net only to come up with 22 shad to supplement the 39 I was fortunate enough to carry over from a previous trip.  I was hoping the scarcity of shad was not a foreshadowing of a scarcity of gamefish.

At 6:15, I picked up my three clients with 61 baits on board which made me a bit nervous, but in the end it all worked out. As I’ve done for the last several trips, we probed a number of areas while fishing at the same time by using downriggers. This allowed us to pick up several small fish, but more importantly, eliminate unproductive water while zeroing in on an area where both hybrid stripers and bait was apparent on sonar.

Around 7:10, we switched over from downrigging to using live shad.  I also began to chum and to thump on the boat.  As we got live baits in the water, these three factors combined to draw hybrid in. From roughly 7:20 and until 9:15, we experienced a consistent bite from keeper size hybrid striper, the largest of which went right at 5 1/8 pounds. The fish showed a definite preference for live baits, whereas on previous trips live and dead baits drew equal attention.

As we fished, we got talking about the particulars of the hybrid striper and their great fighting ability.  Dan, who works cattle for a living, appreciated the concept of hybrid vigor — a term used in animal husbandry to describe how a hybridized animal (like a mule, for example) will be stronger and have more stamina than either contributing parent (a horse and a donkey).  Hybrid striped bass definitely display such characteristics when hooked.

By around 9:30 the bite sharply dropped off allowing us only one additional hybrid on live bait. We spent the last 45 minutes of the trip downrigging with a single large Pet Spoon and a three-armed umbrella rig equipped with smaller Pet Spoons. This produced five additional fish taking our tally for the morning up to 44.

TALLY = 44 fish, all caught and released

 

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 6:15a

End Time:  10:00a

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 77F

Water Surface Temp:  83.1F

Wind Speed & Direction:  S8 at trip’s start, shifting to SSW10 by trip’s end.

Sky Conditions:  A nice, thin, grey cloud layer kept the direct sun from beaming on us for the entire duration of this morning’s trip.

Water Level: ~24+  feet above full pool with a release of 5,744 cfs ongoing.  Lake is still rising due to even heavier flows out of Lake Proctor upstream from Belton.

GT = 0

 

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 1763-1764 –  downrigging for smaller fish early

**Area 1768 – live shad fished for suspended fish for 2.5+ hours; mainly keeper hybrid

**Area 1765-1766 – downrigging for last 20 minutes for 3 whites and 1 short hybrid

 

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

Website: www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

E-mail: Bob@HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/bobmaindelle

This past Thursday, June 23, I fished Lake Belton with Tom (T-Byrd) and Tracie Byrd from near Weir, Texas.

Tom and Tracie with our first legal hybrid of the day taken on a downrigged Pet Spoon before sunrise.

Tracie with our largest fish of the trip, tilting the scales just past the 6 pound mark.  This fish was taken on a cutbait suspended at 21 feet over a deeper bottom.

Tom is a retired US Air Force pilot now living with his wife on 50+ acres raising horses and training them for dressage. Our original trip date was scheduled for earlier in the spring, in conjunction with Tracie’s birthday, but foul weather, including lightning, forced a postponement.

Tom told a great “war story” about dropping a 2,000 pound bomb from his F-16 and failing to account for the suddenly lightened load on one side of the plane which caused the plane to roll violently to the “heavy” side to which the other 2,000 pound bomb was still attached!  Obviously, he lived to tell about it.

Fishing has been amazingly consistent given the crazy lake conditions which include high floodwaters and a great amount of throughflow coming out of Lake Proctor, into Belton, only to be quickly discharged from Belton into the Leon River below the dam.

We spent our first 40 minutes on the water trolling Pet Spoons behind downriggers on both 3-armed umbrella rigs and tandem rigs. This allowed us to put our first seven fish in the boat, including five white bass, one short hybrid, and one keeper hybrid. The catch rate while we were downrigging was just so-so.

Soon after the sun rose, and while it was still low in the sky, I began to see hybrid striped bass fill in at mid-depth between 18 and 23 feet over a 32 foot bottom. We transitioned at this time from down rigging to using live and cut baits from a fixed position. We kept our baits consistently at 21 feet down this morning, and caught fish for a solid 2+ hours, during which time we could only keep one rod per person in the water.

By  9:15 the action was slowing substantially, and by 9:35 we had boated our last fish. We pulled the plug about 10 minutes later with exactly 47 fish landed. Of these, over 30 were solid keeper hybrid, with three exceeding the 5 pounds mark, and one exceeding the 6 pound mark.

Even though Tom and Tracie had fished before, they were willing to be coached, especially in regards to the use of circle hooks. This greatly contributed to their success, as they did not go through the steep learning curve that less coachable people typically must.

TALLY = 47 fish, all caught and released

 

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 6:15a

End Time:  9:50a

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 77F

Water Surface Temp:  83.1F

Wind Speed & Direction:  S8 at trip’s start, shifting to SSW12 by trip’s end.

Sky Conditions:  Variable clouds from 30-40% on a fair sky all morning.

Water Level: ~23  feet above full pool with a release of 5,744 cfs ongoing.  Lake is now rising again due to even heavier flows out of Lake Proctor upstream from Belton.

GT = 0

 

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 1762-1641 –  downrigging for smaller fish early

**Area 1767 – live shad fished for suspended fish for 2.5+ hours

 

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

Website: www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

E-mail: Bob@HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/bobmaindelle

This past Wednesday, June 23, I fished a SKIFF program fishing trip with Mrs. Katie Erp and her two children, seven-year-old Eden, and not-quite-four-year-old Warren.  SKIFF stands for Soldiers’ Kids Involved in Fishing Fun.  It is a free program which provides professionally guided fishing trips to the children of soldiers who, due to military duty, are separated from their families.

From left: Mrs. Katie Erp, her seven-year-old daughter, Eden, and her about-to-be-four-year-old son, Warren.

Katie’s husband, Chief Warrant Officer 4 Andy Erp, is currently deployed with the U.S. Army and serves in an unmanned aircraft unit. The family met me at the only open public access point on Belton Lake around 6:40 AM. I reviewed with the kids where all of the safety gear was stowed, and then showed them the fundamentals of using the fishing equipment we would employ today.

A few minutes’ ride upstream from Belton Park put us in what has been a fishy area over the last two weeks or so. We started off our trip using a pair of downriggers. One was equipped with a three-armed umbrella rig, and the other with a two-armed tandem rig. Five Pet Spoons were doing the dirty work set down around 22 feet where sonar revealed a majority of the fish were holding.

It did not take us long at all to get the kids into their first fish. We pulled fish consistently using the pair of downriggers for a full hour.  As is typical for kids his age, Warren began to get antsy despite the good fishing. So, simply for transition’s sake, we moved to a new area, did a little sightseeing near the waterfall on Belton Lake, and then picked up fishing again with a new method, this time using live shad as bait.

To ensure plenty of action, I am employed four rods.  Two were baited with live bait, and two were baited with chunks of fresh, dead shad. The live baits worked their magic on hybrid striper, and the deadbaits did pretty well for channel catfish. Warren lasted about 30 or 40 minutes at this location before another transition was necessary.

We headed back down stream nearer to where we had launched and I re-employed the downriggers, this time in the vicinity of open-water schooling white bass, hoping to encounter these fish as they sounded. We were able to pick up two whites and a short hybrid using this tactic.

Our final transition came within 20 minutes of the close of our trip when we moved up into shallow, newly flooded brush and used poles equipped with slipbobbers and small hooks to target sunfish and black tail shiners. We were also surprised to pick up a small smallmouth bass in this way. For our efforts today we wound up putting 22 fish in the boat and hopefully made the wait for dad’s return from overseas a little bit shorter and more bearable.

Providing homefront parents with some time of respite has become one of the most appreciated aspects of this SKIFF program.  The Austin Fly Fishers donates funds and seeks funding from individuals and organizations to make this SKIFF program a reality for homefront spouses and their children.

They do not ask for thanks or recognition, they simply desire others to take advantage of the opportunities this program offers.  If your spouse is away on military duty, your child(ren) qualify for a free SKIFF fishing adventure.  Please just phone me at the number below to make arrangements for your trip!

 

TALLY = 22 FISH, all caught and released

 

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 6:40a

End Time:  10:25a

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 77F

Water Surface Temp:  83F

Wind Speed & Direction:  SSE8-12

Sky Conditions:  20% cloud cover on a fair sky.

Water Level: ~23 feet high and still rising due to ongoing heavy release of water from Lake Proctor upstream.

Other: GT= 0

 

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**1765-1767 downrigging for first hour

**1766 live bait for hybrid and channel cat

**490-491 downrigging for “popcorn” white bass

**1583 panfish on slipfloats

 

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

Website: www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

E-mail: Bob@HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/bobmaindelle

This past Tuesday morning, June 21, I targeted hybrid striped bass on Belton Lake with Luis Garcia and his friend, Mark Lozen.

Luis Garcia displays one of the many keeper-sized hybrid striper we caught on live shad this morning, both near bottom (early) and suspended (at mid-morning).

Mark Lozen had some prior experience using circle hooks from having fished live and cut bait in the Gulf of Mexico.  This helped flatten the learning curve and helped us convert more strikes into fish landed.

Luis, his wife, and two kids fished with me this past Spring Break at which time we targeted white bass using slabs on Stillhouse Hollow. This week, the kids were at camp and so Luis and Mark decided to make this an all-guys trip.

We started our trip downrigging under low light conditions before sunrise, but did not do all that well given the number of fish I saw both schooled together and suspended. This is typically a feeding posture which should lead to more success than we were experiencing. For this reason I switched us over to live bait, and it was “game on” from that point forward to around 9:15 AM.

The bite started off fairly intensely, allowing us only to get one rod per man in the water, and then as the action slowed we bumped up to 2 rods per person.  We fished only two areas this morning.  The first area had fish concentrated on and near bottom, and the second area had fish suspended at 22-24 feet down over a 36-37 foot bottom.

Mark and Luis both work for Austin-based law firms, and as they explained it, the Austin law community is a fairly small and tightknit group. The two have been friends since the 80s. Mark originally came down from Michigan where he fished for walleye, pike, perch, and bluegill both in open water and through the ice. When Mark learned of Luis’ familiarity with the Texas Gulf Coast fishery, the two hit it off and have been friends ever since.

By 9:40 the bite had really wound down, and it was clear any further action would be anticlimactic compared to what we’d just experienced, so, we wrapped up a bit early and the two went hunting for a late breakfast in downtown Belton.

TALLY = 47 fish, all caught and released

 

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 6:15a

End Time:  9:40a

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 77F

Water Surface Temp:  83.1F

Wind Speed & Direction:  S8 at trip’s start, shifting to SSW12 by trip’s end.

Sky Conditions:  Variable clouds from 40-60% on a fair sky all morning.

Water Level: ~23  feet above full pool with a release of 5,744 cfs ongoing.  Lake is now rising again due to even heavier flows out of Lake Proctor upstream from Belton.

GT = 40

 

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 1765 –  live shad fished near bottom

**Area 1766 – live shad fished at 20-22′ for suspended fish over ~36-37 foot bottom

 

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

Website: www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

E-mail: Bob@HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/bobmaindelle

Back in late May I was contacted by Mrs. Rowena Miller of Belton. She wanted to get a Father’s Day gift certificate for her husband, Bill, and her 13-year-old daughter, Lily. This past Saturday, June 18, Bill and Lily redeemed that certificate for a great morning of fishing on Belton Lake.

Mr. Bill Miller of Belton, TX, displays his record-breaking catch-and-release category hybrid striper.  This fish measured 25.625 inches, just barely eclipsing the former 25.50 inch record set by Lacey Sparkman in May of 2011.  Both record fish were caught on large live shad.

Mrs. Rowena Miller sent her husband, Bill, and 13-year-old daughter, Lily, on a fishing excursion for Fathers’ Day.
We met at 6:15 AM, prayed for the day ahead, went over some basics about what we would be doing and why and how we would be doing it, and then began our pursuit of fish.

Fortunately, because our weather has begun to become stable, today’s fishing was very much like my two previous trips with the fish doing essentially the same thing in the same places at the same times. The fish we caught today were within hundred yards of where they have been over the past several days.

Despite the fish being in the same locations, they reacted a bit differently to our presentations.  A case in point: the day before, we picked up 17 fish on downrigged Pet Spoons in the first 75 minutes after sunrise when very active fish showed to be in a suspended and feeding posture from bottom up to mid- depth. Today, the fish were in a much more reserved posture, closer to bottom, unwilling to chase moving lures very far, and all but disinterested in the downriggered baits. So, we transitioned to fishing with live bait from a fixed position much earlier this morning then during yesterday’s trip.

Long story short, we “camped out” on top of one area for a full three hours, steadily putting together a catch of 42 fish which consisted of roughly 1/3 short hybrids under 18 inches, and 2/3 keeper hybrids of 18 inches or greater.

The highlight of the trip was having Bill, a 78-year-old Belton native who has lived in this area since before Belton Lake even existed, catch a new lake record in the catch and release category. Bill’s outsized fish struck a 6 inch long gizzard shad fish within 3 feet of bottom. The fish pulled several yards of line against the drag multiple times before we got it to boatside and landed it.  This came on the heels of a 25.25″ fish landed yesterday by Greg Hughes III of Copperas Cove in the Junior Angler catch & release category.

Although not a very chunky fish, this fish was very long, taping at 25.75 inches, beating out the previous catch and release record of 25.50 inches by just one quarter of an inch. Catch and release category records are determined by length, not by weight, so as to minimize the handling required for fish that are going to be released.

After a solid three hours of fishing, the bite really begin to taper off hard, and so we decided to call it a great day while a bit of cloud cover and a nice 8 mile-per-hour south breeze allowed being outdoors to remain comfortable on what would be a very hot and uncomfortable day by early afternoon.

Happy Father’s Day, Bill! Congratulations on the new lake record.

 

TALLY = 42 fish, all caught and released

 

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 6:15a

End Time:  9:35a

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 77F

Water Surface Temp:  83.1F

Wind Speed & Direction:  SSE8 entire time

Sky Conditions:  Variable clouds from 30-50% on a fair sky all morning.

Water Level: ~22  feet above full pool with a release of 5,744 cfs ongoing.  Lake is falling ~0.2 to 0.3 feet per day

GT = 0

 

 

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 1764/011 –  live shad fished near bottom for 42 fish, a majority of which were legal hybrid

 

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

Website: www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

E-mail: Bob@HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/bobmaindelle