CLIENTS: This morning, Wednesday, April 30, I fished with returning guest, Mr. John Gossard of Temple, Texas a U.S. Air Force Viet Nam veteran. Joining him were his adult sons, James, a firefighter from Leander, and John, a maintenance man from Texas City.

DATE: Wednesday, 30 April 2025 (AM)

NEXT OPEN DATE FOR FISHING: 12 June (AM)

NEXT OPEN DATES FOR SONAR TRAINING: 21 June (AM)






PHOTO CAPTION: This morning’s crew, from left: James, John, and John Gossard with a few of the 121 fish they landed, primarily working MAL Heavy lures vertically with a “smoking” retrieve.

WHERE WE FISHED: Lake Belton

SUMMARY OF HOW WE FISHED:

High winds for a fourth consecutive day forced us to change from our first choice of launch locations. In hindsight, I’m glad we did that, as the winds got up every bit as high as they were forecast to.

The skies were completely grayed over save for a roughly a 15 minute span around 11:00-11:15 AM. Otherwise, the skies were so gray, squinting was unnecessary.

Having seen fish give a cold shoulder to even live bait yesterday, I re-doubled my efforts at finding and catching fish with artificials, and committed to simply cover water until sonar revealed what I knew would be schools of fish aggressive enough to chase the MAL Lures we presented.

Fortunately, the fish had a much better disposition today, and we were able to catch fish from start to finish. The peak of this morning‘s activity came from 8:50 to 9:40. During that time, I was going from one client to the next, simply taking off fish continuously.

We used the MAL Heavy with silver blade and chartreuse tail exclusively for the first 107 fish we landed. 90% of those were taken fishing the lure vertically using a smoking tactic. The balance were taken using a sawtooth method when I saw an abundance of fish on the port or starboard side, using side imaging as we fished from a Spot-Locked position. The vertical work was greatly enhanced by LiveScope which everyone very much enjoyed using.

At 10:50 AM, a small storm cell moving from southeast to northwest produced thunder and lightning close enough that we decided it prudent to head back to the dock, thus getting off of open water while the storm passed. After a roughly 10 minute delay, we went right back to catching fish using the MAL Heavy vertically. From 10:30 to 11:25 we changed things up and fished live bait after I presented that option to my crew in hope of nabbing a keeper hybrid striper or two. We landed our final 14 fish on bait, including five of the eight hybrid which came aboard today, as well as two blue cat and additional white bass. We wrapped it up at 11:25 AM with exactly 121 fish landed.

RESULTS: 121 fish, all caught and released



TUTORIAL VIDEO ON HOW TO DO “SLOW SMOKING”: Click here for tutorial

TUTORIAL VIDEO ON HOW TO FISH AN MAL LURE USING THE SAWTOOTH METHOD: Click here for tutorial





OBSERVATIONS:

Threadfin shad spawn continues.
No helpful bird activity.
Fish enthusiastically pursued MAL Lures both vertically and horizontally; live bait put fish in the boat in the final hour as the bite got tough.


LATEST WATER TEMPERATURE PROFILE:

This is the most up-to-date water temperature profile for Lake Belton, measured with a FishHawk TD device around 6:40AM on Thursday, 24 April

0 feet 71.7F
5 feet 71.7F
10 feet 71.7F
15 feet 71.3F
20 feet 69.9F
25 feet 68.4F
30 feet 66.9F
35 feet 65.0F
40 feet 63.3F
45 feet61.5F
50 feet 60.3F
55 feet 59.2F
60 feet 59.0F

This was the previous water temperature profile for Lake Belton, measured with a FishHawk TD device around 6:55AM on Tuesday, 15 April…

0 feet 68.4F
5 feet 68.4F
10 feet 67.4F
15 feet 65.9F
20 feet 65.1F
25 feet 64.3F
30 feet 63.5F
35 feet 62.6F
40 feet 61.9F
45 feet 60.0F
50 feet 59.2F
55 feet 58.2F
60 feet 58.0F

WEATHER DATA:

Start Time: 7:00A

End Time: 11:25A

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 72F

Elevation: 3.11′ low (a 0.10′ rise in 24 hours)

Water Surface Temp: 72.0F on the surface.

Wind Speed & Direction: Variable SSE winds from 6 to 16 all morning

Sky Condition: Moderately overcast grey skies all morning with 100% coverage

Moon Phase: Waxing crescent moon at 12% illumination.

GT = 55



Wx SNAPSHOT:








AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

Area vic B0171C – 4 fish on smoked MAL Heavy Lures with chartreuse tail

Area vic 788 – 18 fish on smoked MAL Heavy Lures with chartreuse tail

Area vic B0172C – 14 fish on smoked MAL Heavy Lures with chartreuse tail

Area vic 328 – 65 fish on smoked & sawtoothed MAL Heavy Lures with chartreuse tail

Area vic B0006G – 6 fish on smoked MAL Heavy Lures with chartreuse tail

Area vic B0173C – 14 fish on live shad


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

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Thank you for your service John Gossard...

Solid post and fish. Good job as always