CLIENTS: On the evening of Aug. 27, I invited my brother, Andy Maindelle and his wife, Amy, to accompany me on a scouting trip on Lake Belton. I’d not fished an evening trip since Aug. 14 before my California rockfishing trip, and didn’t want to take clients out and spend time looking for fish the following evening. So, we went scouting together for just 2 hours, leading up to dark.



DATE: Tuesday, 27 August 2024 (PM)



NEXT OPEN DATES: 10-12 Sep.






PHOTO CAPTION: My brother, Andy Maindelle, joined me for a scouting trip as I nailed down a few evening locations for white bass for an evening trip with clients the next day.



WHERE WE FISHED: Lake Belton



SUMMARY OF HOW WE FISHED:

Amy decided to read an e-book while on the water, so, it was up to Andy and I to do the catching. We started off downrigging over open water and found fish at ~16-24′ deep over a ~30′ bottom. We caught fish steadily on #12 Pet Spoons behind 3-armed umbrella rigs, but they were small fish.

By 6:30, I moved and searched for fish primarily with side-imaging over a 24-32′ bottom with ‘riggers set at 14-19’. Suspecting larger fish would be present, I changed us over to #13 Pets. Side-imaging revealed solid returns indicting plenty of fish present, but, they were in small (~20-30 fish) schools and were really moving, chasing after 1 1/8″ shad.

We caught fish steadily, and they were all legal. As the light level reduced rapidly with the sun going behind cloud cover in the western sky, some solid topwater action broke out over a 34′ bottom about 100 yards further offshore than we were downrigging.

We hopped up on the front casting deck and positioned upwind of these fish as best we could so as not to chase them with the trolling motor, and sight-cast MAL Minis to the pods of fish as the boiled.

This lasted about 25 minutes, afterwhich we did another short stint of downrigging, followed by some vertical work smoking MAL Originals. As the sun set we headed up shallower and fancast MAL Originals using a sawtooth retrieve to finish out the trip.

In all, we caught and released exactly 70 fish, including 69 white bass and 1 smallmouth bass. I was now confident of where to go and when to go there with my clients scheduled for the following evening.

Here is a tutorial on vertically smoking the MAL Lure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDSvfXgrAUE

Here is a tutorial on horizontally “sawtoothing” with the MAL Lure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IC3FMEQHOMQ



LURES USED SUCCESSFULLY ON THIS TRIP: We downrigged with #12 & #13 Pet Spoons. We sight-cast to surface feeders with MAL Minis. We smoked MAL Originals for heavily schooled and fairly stationary fish in about 22′. We sawtoothed with MAL Originals for shallow fish at dark. Find all MAL Lures here: https://whitebasstools.com/



TALLY: 70 fish caught and released, including 1smallmouth bass, and 69 white bass.



OBSERVATIONS:

1) About 25 min. of topwater action despite light whitecapping due to a SE12 wind.

2) Best quality fish came in the last 90 minutes; mainly smaller fish in the first 30 minutes.



LATEST WATER TEMPERATURE PROFILE:

Here was the water temperature profile for Lake Belton, measured with a FishHawk TD device around 6:25 AM on Monday, August 26 …

0 feet 87.2F
5 feet 87.6F
10 feet 87.9F
15 feet 87.9F
20 feet 87.9F
25 feet 87.9F
30 feet 87.2F
35 feet 85.6F
40 feet 84.2F
45 feet 83.3F


WEATHER DATA:

Start Time: 6:15P

End Time: 8:15P

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 94F

Elevation: 0.64′ low and falling slowly with a 52 cfs flow; .04′ fall in last 24 hours

Water Surface Temp: 88.2F on the surface.

Wind Speed & Direction: SE12

Sky Condition: 35% white cloud cover increasing to 75% and going gray in advance of rain coming in after dark.

Moon Phase: Waning crescent moon at 38% illumination.

GT = N/A



AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

Area 1922 thru 1802 — 22 fish downrigging #12 Pets
Area B0155C thru 1933 — 32 fish via downrigging leading to sightcasting for topwater fish
Area vic 1933 – 6 fish smoking MAL Originals w/ LiveScop
Area vic 018 – 10 fish sawtoothing MAL Originals up shallow at dark


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

Smiles keep coming. As always solid post and fish. Good job.