Well we left Tyler Monday morning about 3am, my son and I took his boat since he recently had a little work done on the boat and wanted to run it pretty good. After a stop at Buc-ees for coffee and sandwiches we arrived at the ramp right at 6:30am. We put in at Frank's Marina so we were pretty close to the dam. We fished the 2 coves too the left of the dam. My son caught the first bass on a Ned rig off of some wood in the first cove, but wood wasn't the juice. It was a little cool and breezy that morning bluebird sky's and high pressure, which had the fish in a funk.

We were marking fish in the creeks, they were right on the bottom in 15 to 25ft of water and were biting extremely slow. I caught 2 small largemouth on shakey head, but no smallies. We ran up the river to cedar creek arm and fished several creeks and pockets some of which had 61 to 63 degree water but didn't see any beds. Largemouth were in those creeks, high pressure had them not chewing. You had to hit them on the nose to get bit but we managed to catch 7 or 8, 2 to 3lb range. I did pop a nice female 6.22 pounds. Only thing we could get bit on was shakey head trickworms, dragging them slowly across the rocks on the bottom. We fished creek bends,bluff walls,ledges, shallow flats in the backs of creeks,around marinas, it was tough.

As the evening rolled around we decided to run back out to the main lake and hit some main lake points in an effort to try and find a few smallmouth. On the way we saw something schooling and the birds were going crazy. We eased over within casting distance and first cast with a rattletrap yielded a 5 pound hybrid. We followed that school for about a hundred yards and caught them back to back for the next hour. Man talk about fun. All in all we didn't catch any smallmouth but all things considered, it was a great trip and I think I'm going to like fishing belton many may more times in the near future. BTW, the lake is absolutely beautiful, its definitely different than what I am accustomed to fishing.


Lake conditions on Monday 56 to 57 water temp mainlake, 59 to 62 in some creeks. Water is down about 13.5ft below normal pool. Water wasn't gin clear,it was green but had a cloudy look to it, anyways awesome lake and will be going back very soon ,it's about to burst wide open. Here's a picture of the 6.22.

Excellent report. Glad you guys had fun.

Nice fish!

Good report!

Nice fish and good report. Thanks

That smile says it all

Great report, thanks for the details. If you head up to the Ft. Hood Rec area, there are some old ponds about 100' out (at full pool) that we would drag rigs across with good luck. And Temple Lake Park is always good for hybrids and whites. Glad yall caught fish.

Thanks for an awesome report! Never fished Belton before but I’m going to meet an old fishing buddy there in another week or two, so your info is a great help!

Paparon,unless we get one of those mid March cold fronts you and your buddy should have a ball. The lake and surrounding terrain is absolutely beautiful. You can be 20ft off the bank and be in 30ft of water. We didn't find the smallies , but from what I was told the dam area will be your best option. Two deep coves to the left of the dam has plenty of deep water and wood. Good stuff.

Check out cedar creek arm, it's a couple of miles up the river on the right. That creek is huge and has dozens of cuts and creek arms that all have fish in them ready to spawn. You'll find plenty of deep winding creeks with wood bluff walls,ledges,marinas and some great looking shallow points and flats in backs of some creeks. We didn't do a whole lot of riding so I can on describe the areas we fished but I'm sure the lake has much more to offer. We barely scratched the surface. Good luck and have a great trip.

Thanks for the report. I ALMOST headed there yesterday looking for smallmouth, but went to Bastrop instead since I didn’t feel like. 2.5 hour drive. My starting battery pooped out at lunch time and I had some stuff to do at home, so I headed back. Sounds like I didn’t miss much at Belton on the smallmouth front!

Great report