Bob Maindelle

WHO I FISHED WITH: This past Saturday evening, August 29th, I fished for a second time with the entire Olds family from the Austin area. Joining me this evening were Brian, Tasha, Katelyn (age 12) and Connor (age 8). They previously came out with me back in November of 2016.

Both Brian and Tasha work in the computer industry, and 2020 has been a very busy one for them thus far.

They got to squeeze in a few vacation days for the first time in a long time last week, and wanted to do this fishing trip together before the busyness of the new school years with sports-filled weekends, etc. kicks in.

PHOTO CAPTION #1: The Olds Family — August 2020

PHOTO CAPTION #2: The Olds Family — November 2016

WHERE WE FISHED: Belton Lake

HOW WE FISHED: As I thought ahead on how to conduct this trip and keep the kids engaged, my chief concern was the combination of very hot weather and the possibility of slow action in the first half of the trip, leaving the kids too worn out to enjoy the typically solid action from white bass about 1.5 to 2 hours prior to sunset.

Since the kids fished with me previously in November, and since that was 4 years ago, I thought doing something different on this trip would keep them engaged, so, I chose a few shaded areas where I felt our chances at catching sunfish would be strong. Sunfish typically fall out of my catch by mid-October, but, the hotter the water, the better they bite. We hit two shallow water areas using bream poles and, with Brian’s capable assistance, we kept both Connor and Katelyn on the fish for a full 2+ hours, landed bluegill sunfish, green sunfish, and 1 longear sunfish.

As the kids fished, I noted that Connor had a “tendency” to flip his rig right into the same spot Katelyn had just pulled a sunfish from instead of fishing with confidence in his own areas. I chuckled when I saw this and told the kids that in the fishing world, this is called “potlicking” and that a person engaged in potlicking is called a potlicker.

Defined, a potlicker is someone who, instead of having the confidence in their own abilities to find and catch fish, simply looks for others who have found fish and then horns in, uninvited, on top of the person who has already put the work. After introducing the term, as siblings will, each accused the other fairly routinely of potlicking for the remainder of our trip. Potlicking aside, the kids boated 62 sunfish.

Around 6:30-6:45 we shifted gears and changed our focus to hunting white bass in open water using downriggers. The fishing was pretty straightforward as we used 3-armed umbrella rigs equipped with Pet Spoons. We got right into fish after setting the balls to depth, and the frequency of our hookups increased as dark approached. We took singles, doubles and two sets of triples right up until dark, putting 41 white bass in the boat.

You can bet the sibs were quite competitive on the downrigging fish count, as well!!

TALLY: 70 fish caught and released (69 white bass, 1 largemouth bass)

OBSERVATIONS: No observed topwater action.

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 4:30PM

End Time: 8:30PM

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 100F

Elevation: 2.75′ low, -0.05′ 24-hour change, 51 CFS flow

Water Surface Temp: 86.0F

Wind Speed & Direction: SSE8.

Moon Phase: Waxing gibbous with 86% illumination

GT = 50

Wx SNAPSHOT:

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area B0032G and B0036G 62 sunfish in first 2 hours

**Area 085 – center of mass for evening downrigging for white bass. Fished out deeper than this area up to around 7:50, then moved on the shallow side of this area for the last minutes of light.

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

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#Fitec

WHO I FISHED WITH: This morning, Monday, August 17th, I fished with Shane LaCanne and his 7-year-old son, Fisher, of Salado. This was a “Kids Fish, Too!” package trip, tailored just for elementary-aged kids. Such trips have a reduced duration and a reduced price tag versus adult trips.

Shane brought both of his boys out with me once before, but this trip was just for Fisher, in celebration of his birthday back in July.

Today’s big story was the weather. Last night, a cold front pushed through very suddenly with brief, strong winds and a bit of rain. As we were on the southernmost extreme of that system, no sooner did the front pass, than our winds, which blew NW from around 2:30A to 3:15A, turned right back around out of the south. It is really hard to classify this as pre-frontal, because it wasn’t until around 9:30AM that the winds finally changed to a northerly component for keeps. At that time the fishing, which was average this morning, began to sour quickly.

One thing is for sure, I will be doing sonar training on Tuesday and Wednesday to avoid the no-doubt tough fishing over the next 2 days with light northerly winds and bright, cloudless skies!

PHOTO CAPTION #1: 7-year-old Fisher LaCanne and his dad, Shane, with the two best fish Fisher landed on our 51-fish outing under “squirrely” wind and weather conditions.

WHEN WE FISHED: 17 August, 2020, AM

WHERE WE FISHED: Lake Belton

HOW WE FISHED: The crazy weather definitely impacted the early morning, low-light topwater bite, as it was essentially non-existent this morning. I spotted only 2 instances of topwater feeding whites all morning, both of which were witnessed after 8AM and only for a few seconds. So, we moved back out to mid-depths, found shad, and began to work near where bait was abundant, but not relaxed (meaning, it was balled up and in a defensive posture).

We downrigged for a solid hour, putting 17 white bass and 1 blue cat in the boat, all the while never finding a single scenario which convinced me to pull up the ‘riggers and go vertical with MAL Lures. Since most of these fish were on the small side anyway, we left these fish to look for greener pastures.

The second area we fished was more productive, and was also later in time from the early morning’s frontal passage. Again, we found abundant bait and that bait was in balls, up off bottom. I intended to begin searching with ‘riggers down, but almost immediately came upon a sizeable school of bottom-hugging white bass which I felt certain would respond to a smoking tactic with MAL Lures. We got the boat in a hover over these fish, let the lures down, and the fish were all over them.

Over the next 90 minutes we alternated between downrigging to find schools of bottom-dwelling white bass and then fishing vertically for them as long as they would bite. We added another 33 white bass to our catch. The catch rate began to slow rapidly around 9:30 when the winds finally took on a northerly direction after swinging from S, through W in the time between pre-dawn and 9:30.

In our final 45 minutes on the water, we caught only 6 fish, and all of them came on the downrigger as we had to get our baits in front of a mess of disinterested fish in order to strain out a few still willing to bite.

TALLY: 51 fish caught and released

OBSERVATIONS:

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 6:30A

End Time: 10:15A

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 74F

Elevation: 2.19′ low, -0.01′ 24-hour change, 51 CFS flow

Water Surface Temp: 84.2F

Wind Speed & Direction: S12 before sunrise, calming to S6 shortly thereafter, then slowly shifting SSW, SW, W, then WNW by 9:30A Sky Condition: ~15% white cloud cover with light blue skies and low humidity

Moon Phase: Waning crescent with 3% illumination; 2 days ’til new moon

GT = 25

Wx SNAPSHOT: Two wx snapshots I took today; one taken at 4AM, the other at 6AM, as the wind forecast direction changed drastically: