childrens fishing trips

WHO I FISHED WITH: On Saturday morning, Dec. 12th, I fished with mother/son team Jessica and 6-year-old Joey Ybanez of Killeen. Jessica is a first grade teacher at Cavazos Elementary School in Nolanville. Each Christmas season she dedicates one full day to spend exclusively with each of her three kids, one at a time. Today was Joey’s day.

Joey got to plan the meals and the activities for the day. He and Jessica began with breakfast on the go consisting of many pounds of snackfoods provided by Joey’s grandpa. Joey seemed to home in on the Cinnamon Toast Crunch. The morning was to be spent on Lake Belton fishing with me, followed by lunch at What-A-Burger, the afternoon spent at an arcade, and closed out with dinner (another burger) at the Dead Fish Grill.

When Jessica contacted me about a month ago to schedule their trip, I actually tried to talk her out of this and into something in the warmer months when I have more variety to offer younger kids. I was concerned that the fishing would be too technical and too one-dimensional to keep such a young boy’s interest. Jessica decided to go forward with the trip, and all turned out well.

We booked this as a “Kids Fish, Too!” package, which it a bit shorter and less expensive than a full, 4+ hour adult trip.

PHOTO CAPTION #1: Joey and Jessica Ybanez put 46 white bass and two largemouth bass in the boat under tough conditions this morning. Little Joey hung in there the entire time!

PHOTO CAPTION #2: You gotta read the story for the explanation on the pink socks and wagon-load of provisions!

WHERE WE FISHED: Belton Lake

WHEN WE FISHED: Saturday (AM), 12 December 2020

HOW WE FISHED:

Overnight, a cold front moved in, changing our weather from a balmy, calm, 70F atmosphere at sunset on Friday to a cold, crisp, 41F morning with north winds and bluebird skies today. The early bird definitely did NOT get the worm this morning. I actually delayed our meeting time until 7:45, meaning we would not wet lines until at or after 8:00AM, and, even then, we did not find fish to catch for the first 30 minutes or so.

I always arrive well in advance of my clients, and, as I did so this morning witnessed birds working over bait naturally occurring at the surface right at first light, however, there were not gamefish pushing these shad there. The activity drew 4 or 5 boats, but to no avail — they quickly dispersed.

We encountered no helpful bird action this morning — everything was done by slowly probing the depths with sonar. We spent about an hour atop the first group of fish we found, putting exactly 25 fish in the boat before they got lazy (still present on sonar, but totally disinterested in presentations of any speed). We caught all of our fish here on MAL Lures, with suspended fish witnessed on Garmin LiveScope being the most likely candidates to chase and be caught, while the fish on bottom tended to be more reserved.

About the time we transitioned from our first area to our second, Joey let his mom know that his feet were getting cold. He had multiple layers of socks on, but the caused his feet to fit too tightly in his shoes, so, mom “engineered” a solution, taking his shoes off, adding a third layer of socks, and having Joey stand on a spare jacket to keep his feet dry. This actually worked okay, even if Joey did resemble a character out of a Dr. Seuss story!

We moved on to fish two more areas, both in 45-47 feet of water. Sonar revealed the fishing was going to be tough before we even dropped lures down to test things out, as the fish were super-tight to the bottom and only one fish deep. There was no clean target separation on these fish on my Garmin 8616 in DownVu with magnification turned up, meaning they could not even be seen on the lower resolution of the Humminbird Solix 15.

We just kept working the MAL Lures on the fish we could find, doing well catching cruising “suspenders”, and, once in a while, fooling a group of greedy bottom-huggers into chasing and biting, as well. This “ground and pound” got us 23 more fish before the wind went out of their sail and the bite stopped right at 11:30.

With that, I cleaned the “sticky” off of Joey’s spinning reel handle (Cinnamon Toast Crunch residue), bid them farewell, and watched Joey march off in his pink socks, headed for What-A-Burger!!

See the MAL Lure, Hazy Eye Slabs, and Stinger Hooks here: https://whitebasstools.com/

See tutorial video on how to work the MAL Lure here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDSvfXgrAUE&t=239s

TALLY: 48 fish caught and released

OBSERVATIONS: There was no helpful bird activity this morning. Although birds did feed on shad naturally occurring on the surface right at first light, these shad were not driven there by gamefish.

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 7:45A

End Time: 11:30A

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 41F

Elevation: 1.00 low with a 0.03’ 24-hour rise and 34 CFS flow thru the dam

Water Surface Temp: 57.6F

Wind Speed & Direction: NNW10 just about the entire trip — post-frontal tapering off of wind velocity was in play.

Sky Condition: Bluebird skies

Moon Phase: Waning gibbous moon at 7% illumination

GT = 0

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AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area B0201C, 1552, 1298, vic 1325 – slow but steady action at each location under post-frontal weather.

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, Friday, August 28th, I fished with Nathan and Trisha Ratliff and their four kids, Amelia (11), Hannah (10), Hunter (7), and Clara (4), of Harker Heights, TX, on a Kids Fish, Too! adventure on Lake Belton.

PHOTO CAPTION #1: Back row: Nathan and Trisha; front row, from left: Amelia, Hunter, Clara, and Hannah.

WHERE WE FISHED: Lake Belton

HOW WE FISHED: The Ratliffs arrived with no prior fishing experience and no prior boating experience, so, I planned ahead to have them show up a bit earlier than normal so as to cover things more thoroughly than I might with a family that had prior experience.

Trips like this, with quite an age spread over several kids, can be a bit tough as what it takes to interest and engage an 11-year-old is quite different from what it takes to interest and engage a 4-year-old. My plan was to seek after quantity, and let quality fall where it may so as to keep fish coming over the side of the boat and maintain the kids’ interest over the 3 1/2 hours these kid-specific trips last for.

We started out looking for topwater action which did not materialize thanks to the heavy chop on the water, but, that kept the traffic light and allowed us to get onto fish without company nearby until right as the fish were winding down their low-light feed. We had the fish to ourselves for about 40 minutes, during which time we put singles and doubles in the boat on downriggers equipped with 3-armed umbrella rigs; only once did we stop to fish MAL Lures, primarily because in the time it would take to make everyone proficient, we’d miss a lot of opportunity for fish on the downriggers which everyone was already now familiar with.

By the time the low-light feed was over, we’d landed 28 white bass. We gave the white bass time time to ‘rest and digest’ (Amelia really like that term) from their early morning binge by heading up shallow to do some sunfishing with plans to save our final hour to pursue additional white bass out in deeper water. The shallow sunfishing went well. We landed 40 sunfish (bluegill, greens, and longears). By around 8:45 AM I was hoping to get back in open water to start hunting white bass again, and, by this time, the kids had landed 30 sunfish. Amelia asked if she could catch ‘just one more’ about 10 times! Yep — she’s hooked! Anyway, we sunfished another 15 minutes and put 10 more fish in the boat for a total of 40 sunfish, then, around 9AM we headed back out for a final hour’s worth of white bass fishing.

We hit two areas, finding fish suspended at 25-27′ deep at the first and finding fish on bottom in 25′ at the second. In our final hour or so, we landed 3 sets of triples, about as many doubles, and plenty of singles, all in the 0, 1, and 2 year class. By 10AM, the time we’d all hoped all four kids would be able to make it through, we had 94 fish in the boat. This time it was dad urging the kids to push on ’til we’d reached 100 fish for the morning. That took all of about 12 minutes as we landed our final triple, four singles, and one double in that span of time.

It’s always nice to be able to “finish strong”, especially with kids on board.

TALLY: 103 fish caught and released (62 white bass, 1 hybrid striper, 40 sunfish)

OBSERVATIONS: ~12 mph chop put would-be surface feeders down this morning, so there was no topwater action where we were. Sonar lit up and provided ample downrigging opportunities.

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 6:30A

End Time: 10:15A

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 81F

Elevation: 2.70′ low, -0.06′ 24-hour change, 51 CFS flow

Water Surface Temp: 83.9F

Wind Speed & Direction: Light winds under 3mph from the ENE due to counter-clockwise rotation of the atmosphere impacted by Hurricane Laura Sky Condition: Hazy blue skies

Moon Phase: Waxing gibbous with 78% illumination

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