CLIENTS: This evening I fished with returning guests Wes & Knox Stearns and Rudy & Jaxen Yepez.   If those names sound familiar it is because Wes & Knox have been aboard three times now in the past three weeks, and Rudy & Jaxen joined then just last Wednesday evening.  Each time, the plan was to get in just one more fishing trip before school.  As we returned to the boat ramp after a successful evening, the boys were due to be seated in their classes in under 12 hours’ time!

DATE: Monday, 12 August 2024 (PM)

NEXT OPEN DATES:  14 & 15 Aug. (AM & PM)

WHERE WE FISHED: Lake Belton

SUMMARY OF HOW WE FISHED:  I planned to fish with the boys (only, as this was a Kids Fish, Too! trip just for them) for 3.5 hours.  I baited out an area for catfish to provide a bit of variety, suspecting that the white bass fishing wouldn’t really kick in until  about 2.5 to 3 hours before dark.

Well, we got one pulldown in 30 minutes on the catfish deal and left it behind.

We then began searching in the 22-28′ range for white bass.  We looked over six areas, and found fish at five of them, but, all the fish we found were short fish — 39 consecutive short fish!!  The boys took these on MAL Minis worked vertically with a smoking tactic, aided by Garmin LiveScope.   I experimented with an MAL Original, but this was too large for these small fish, and, evidently all of the fish in these areas were small.

At just after 7P, we moved again.  My intentions were to downrig over a large area while really paying attention to side-imaging to ferret out where fish might be.  We did not have to do much ferreting, as we passed directly over what appeared to be sedentary fish.  The boys both landed fish out of this school on the downriggers — a single and a triple — and they were all solid fish over 12.5″.  I instructed them to leave the downrigger rods in, and we quickly U-turned, Spot-Locked on these fish, and fished them vertically (by smoking) and horizontally (by sawtoothing) with MAL Originals.  This one stop gave up exactly 76 legal white bass through about 8:20.

As the sun set and the light failed, the fish moved shallower.  We followed them until they finally quit around 8:40, adding a final 7 additional fish to the count for a final tally of 122 fish.

LURES USED SUCCESSFULLY ON THIS TRIP:  We downrigged with 3-armed umbrella rigs equipped with #12 Pet Spoons for white bass, we “smoked” MAL Minis & MAL Originals vertically and we sawtoothed with both horizontally.  Find three-armed umbrella rigs and MAL Lures here: https://whitebasstools.com/

TALLY: 122 fish caught and released

OBSERVATIONS:

1) We had a SSE breeze at 8-9 with occasionally higher gusts.  This created just enough chop to kill an evening topwater bite — we only saw one school blow up for all of 4 seconds.

2) Nothing but undersized fish at several areas through 7P, then quality fish thereafter; this is just the opposite of what I’m seeing in the mornings.

LATEST WATER TEMPERATURE PROFILE:

Here was the water temperature profile for Lake Belton, measured with a FishHawk TD device around 5:50 AM on Friday, August 9 …

0 feet 87.6F

5 feet 88.2F

10 feet 88.5F

15 feet 87.2F

20 feet 86.2F

25 feet 85.6F

30 feet 85.3F

35 feet 85.0F

40 feet 84.5F

45 feet 83.7F

50 feet 81.9F

55 feet 80.7F

WEATHER DATA:

Start Time: 5:10P

End Time: 8:40P

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 100F

Elevation: 0.09′ low and falling slowly with a 33 cfs flow

Water Surface Temp: 88.9F on the surface.

Wind Speed & Direction: S8 with gusts all evening

Sky Condition: 25% white cloud cover on a slightly hazy blue sky

Moon Phase: First quarter moon at 29% illumination.

GT = 35

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:  

Area 1659 – 8 short whites on smoked MAL Minis

Area 0142 – 7 short whites on smoked MAL Minis

Area 1624 – 6 short whites and 1 drum on smoked MAL Minis

Area B0188C – 3 short whites on smoked MAL Minis

Area B0296C – 15 short whites on smoked MAL Minis

Area vic 165 – 83 white bass – 4 on downriggers, then 79 on smoked/sawtoothed MAL Originals

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