I just got back from almost a week up at Belton for the first time.. Here was my experience
I've never got a smallmouth yet, which is the only reason I decided to go up there. I had a whole thread on here asking what the trick is for smallmouth. Did everything I was told, and the closest I got to one was pulling him up about 10ft from the boat on a crawfish rattle trap and he shook it loose. Everyone on here says to fish early morning, late evening, or even better at night with black spinners. That one I had was late evening around 7:30-8. Right now the water is in the upper 80's. I saw 90 at one part of the lake mid day. I asked any locals I could talk to up there about smallmouth, and every one of the told me I came the wrong time a year. Matter in fact, there were a few guys at Franks I talked to that told me right now is not the time for them, to come back when the water cools down.
But, we did catch largemouth. Every largemouth we put in the boat were either on a texas rigged watermelon red baby brush hogs or a watermelon red finese worm on drop shot. All were caught on the bank in about 15ft of water. Most of them were actually up the river in creeks around Rogers Park.
I'll tell you this though.. Have at least one rod rigged up with a beetle spin or small spinner bait or spoon ready to go.... That whole week we were up there, white bass were schooling all over the place constantly. We'd be running the lake, see them schooling, and just stop and cast in the middle of them. Tore them up. When that school stopped, cranked up, cruised the lake to cool off, and you'd run into another school in no time. In fact, we put in at Temple Park around 6:30 Saturday morning. Buddy backed me in the water, didn't even have the bow strap unhooked, didn't even crank up yet. They immediately started schooling right behind the boat. I unhooked the front strap and just floated off the trailer and put 4 in the boat while my buddy went to park the truck. We decided hell with it, last day here, might as well keep them. Within an hour, we had the limit and were off the water by 8 o'clock headed back to Houston. By the end of it, that beetle spin has seen it's better days...
The largemouth were pretty slow, but you couldn't keep the white bass of the end of your line. This was as of last week. Have fun, it's a beautiful lake. I'll be back up there come late fall