WHO I FISHED WITH: This morning, Thursday, July 13th, I fished with a crew of four returning guests, including Mr. Larry Brewer, his good friend, Blake Hoekstra, Larry’s son-in-law, Chris Zwern, and Larry‘s grandson, Eymon McCormick.

Larry is a living legend in the Austin area HVAC world, Blake retired from accounting, Chris works for a medical imaging company, and Eymon is employed at a video gaming company after recently graduating from high school.

Here is how the fishing went…

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Here’s an up-to-date calendar so you can check availability: https://holdingthelineguideservice.com/available-dates.php

Next available dates are July 31 & August 2 (AM)

PHOTO CAPTION:  From the left, that’s Larry Brewer, Blake Hoekstra, Eymon McCormick, and Chris Zwern.  That white bass Chris is holding went 15 3/8″ and was in great shape.

WHERE WE FISHED: Lake Belton

WHEN WE FISHED: Thursday, 13 July 2023 (AM)

HOW WE FISHED: 

As I sat on the bow of my boat awaiting my crew’s arrival, I was elated that the 14 to 15 mph southwest wind forecast to blow all day today had not yet materialized.  Rather, the wind was only blowing at about 8 to 10. Assuming that the white bass we’re going to feed aggressively on topwater under low light conditions once again (at they did like clockwork for the last several days), I just knew that they would be much easier to spot than in yesterday’s wind-blown tempest.

Well, you know what they say about ass-u-me…

Despite ideal spotting conditions, there was very little topwater action this morning, and what action did materialize was both weak, and short-lived.

By 7:30 AM, when over the past few days we’d had 20 or 30 fish in the boat already, we had landed only five at that point this morning.

Around 7:45 AM, the situation began to improve. I spotted a handful of white bass feeding on the surface atop an underwater anomaly. I swung in for a better look, and sonar really lit up.

I positioned the boat so that Spot-Lock would hold us about a cast’s length away from, and parallel to, the fish I found. I then put everyone on the starboard side, equipped with MAL Heavy Lures with white tails, and had them cast long and work these baits back with a sawtooth method.

Whenever the fishing got slow, I would move us a cast’s length into the wind, thus allowing us to cover this underwater feature very thoroughly.

After this area slacked off, I went to another, similar area, found fish there, positioned the boat in similar fashion, and continued working MALs with a sawtooth tactic. By the time these fish quit our tally was up to 88 fish and the time was 9:45 AM.

Having observed over the last two days how the fishing really began to tail off around this time of the morning, I told my crew that if we were going to hit 100 fish around the 4-hour mark, I felt we would need to downrig for them. Downrigging allows for a lot of ground to be covered very efficiently, thus weeding out the few still active fish amongst a majority of inactive fish.

We got both downriggers working, both equipped with three armed umbrella rigs. I ran #12 Pet Spoons with silver bodies and white feather tails on one downrigger, and #13 Pet Spoons with silver prismatic bodies and yellow feather tails on the other.

We scoured an area which sonar showed had quite a number of both suspended and bottom-oriented white bass present. After several rounds of singles and doubles, fish numbers 100 and 101 came aboard as a double which Eymon reeled in to close out this successful trip at exactly 10:25 AM.

Of the 101 fish landed today, we had 1 legal hybrid, 6 short hybrid, 4 freshwater drum, 1 smallmouth bass, and 89 white bass, of which only 2 were short.

TALLY: 101 fish caught and released.

See a tutorial on the Smoking Method here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDSvfXgrAUE

Here is a tutorial on the Sawtooth Method: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IC3FMEQHOMQ

Find the entire family of MAL Lures  here: https://whitebasstools.com/

OBSERVATIONS:  Here was the water temperature taken the morning of  12 July:

0 feet, 84.5F
5 feet, 85.5F
10 feet, 85.5F
15 feet, 85.6F
20 feet, 85.5F
25 feet, 83.8F
30 feet, 76.1F
35 feet, 72.1F
40 feet, 68.8F
45 feet, 66.3F
50 feet, 65.0F
55 feet, 64.3F
60 feet, 63.1F

 

WEATHER DATA:

Start Time: 6:25A

End Time: 10:35A

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 81F

Elevation: 14.22 feet low, 56 CFS flow

Water Surface Temp: 84.3F on the surface.

Wind Speed & Direction:  SSW9-10 thru 8:30, then slowing tapering up to SSW13

Sky Condition: <10% white cloud cover

Moon Phase: Waning crescent moon at 17% illumination.

GT = 50

Wx SNAPSHOT: 

 

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:  

Area vic 1937 – very light topwater activity through 7:30 – 5 fish

Area vic 1591 – consistent action on sawtoothed MALs

Area vic B0030G – consistent action on sawtoothed MAL’s, with ‘rigging to “mop up” as fish got reluctant

 

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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