WHO I FISHED WITH: This morning, Monday, July 18th, I fished with Pastor Alan McGrath, his wife, Traci, and their two boys, Pax (age 15) and Beckett (age 12).

Alan now leads the congregation of the First United Methodist Church in Georgetown, TX. As he transitioned from his previous assignment in Killeen, one of his congregants, Mrs. Bobbie Morrison, presented him with a fishing gift certificate as a departure gift. Today was the day the McGraths decided to redeem it.

Here is how the fishing went …

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PHOTO CAPTION: From left: Traci, Alan, Pax, and Beckett McGrath cashed in on what was the 2022 Summer Season’s best run of topwater action to date. With “cookie-cutter” high-pressure weather ahead of us for the foreseeable future, I’m very hopeful the topwater action will continue.

WHERE WE FISHED: Lake Belton

WHEN WE FISHED: Monday, 18 July 2022

HOW WE FISHED:

This will be a pretty short summary. Here it goes … All topwater, all morning. That’s it!

With a classic Texas summer high pressure system sitting right on top of us, no other weather can currently influence the hot, dry conditions we have in place now and for the next 10 days or so.

When this happens, the door opens for topwater action, and, this morning, the fish walked right through it.

I had line of sight contact with schools of white bass corralling shad to the surface 100% of the time from before sunup and until they quit at about 10:20AM.

None of the McGraths had used spinning gear before, so, we worked through a bit of a learning curve to overcome this, but, before long, everyone was making long, smooth, accurate casts and pulling fish in at a steady clip.

Right at the very start of the morning we were on a bunch of fish feeding on young-of-the-year shad. Between the fish being focused on this tiny bait, and my crew’s inexperience with spinning reels, I pulled off of the surface feeders for a while after we’d landed 10 fish by sight-casting, and ran downriggers instead until we found fish feeding on larger bait. We took numerous doubles and singles, and everyone demonstrated great teamwork getting the rigs back out after we boated a fish. We took 18 fish on the downriggers.

During this time, we also found one large pod of fish holding on bottom in about 27′. We worked MAL Dense Lures vertically for these fish, catching 7 before they wandered off.

From that point on, it was all sight-casting to topwater white bass feeding on 3″ shad.

One of the big keys to our success was getting ahead of schools of fish and drifting toward them and through them. Those boats insisting on chasing them with the trolling motor or outboard did rather poorly as the fish spooked easily.

Because most of the fish were feeding on mature shad, we used the MAL Original. This is the lightest MAL Lure, and does not sink below the fish too quickly. I modify my MAL Originals for topwater by clipping one of the three treble hook tines off, and mashing the barb down on the two remaining tines. This makes for super-fast releases, and allows us to “make hay while the sun shines” by catching and releasing as many fish as we can while the opportunity presents itself.

Our tally today was 135 fish, including 1 short hybrid, and 134 white bass.

The entire family of MAL Lures is found here: https://whitebasstools.com/

TALLY: 135 fish caught and released

OBSERVATIONS: Got to give a big “shout out” to Roger and Kody Heinze for “sportsmanlike conduct”. These fellows saw the topwater fish I was on, and also saw that I had kids aboard. Instead of “horning in” on the fish I’d found, they courteously moved on by, found their own fish, and did well. Thanks, fellows, for being considerate!

WEATHER DATA:

Start Time: 6:45A

End Time: 10:35A

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 80F

Elevation: 6.60 feet low, 0.06’ fall in last 24 hours, 89 CFS flow

Water Surface Temp: 86.9F

Wind Speed & Direction: S7-9 all morning

Sky Condition: Cloudless skies with just a bit of haze and Saharan dust

Moon Phase: Waning gibbous moon at 72% illumination.

GT = 40

Wx SNAPSHOT:






AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

Areas 1608 thru B02021G – topwater, downrigging, and smoking for white feeding on YOY shad

Areas B0206G to 1548 to 1280 – all sight-casting to topwater whites with 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

Nice post and fish as always. Good job.