CLIENTS: This morning, Friday, May 9, I fished with a crew of four, three of which had fish with me previously. Joining me was the father and son team of Mike and Randall Stone, Shawn DeJournett, and Kevin Foresman (the new guy).

This crew started poking at each other before they even boarded the boat this morning and the good-natured ribbing never stopped over the entire trip. By mid-trip everyone was cautiously measuring their words so no one could one-up them. About this time, Randall asks Mike, “Hey, Dad, are those new jeans you’re wearing?”.

Everyone assumed Randall had something devious he intended to say once Mike replied. To his credit, Mike did not reply immediately and everyone was silent, kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop. Then everyone looked at Randall expectantly, at which time he defensively said, “What? I just wanted to know if they were new or not!”.

I then jokingly asked Randall, “What is that you’ve said to your father in the past which has now made him so hesitant to give you a reply to such a simple question?”. This kickstarted a lot of interesting storytelling about how everyone dealt with critiques or criticisms from others.

DATE: Friday, 09 May 2025 (AM)

NEXT OPEN DATE FOR FISHING: 12 June (AM)

NEXT OPEN DATES FOR SONAR TRAINING: 14 June (AM)








PHOTO CAPTION: From left: Randall Stone, Shawn DeJournett, Kevin Foresman, and Mike Stone, with a few of the white bass taken on live shad.








PHOTO CAPTION: Randall Stone with an 11.5-pound blue catfish which went for a lively threadfin shad fished just a foot off bottom.






PHOTO CAPTION: Shawn DeJournett with a yellow (flathead) catfish which went for a lively threadfin shad fished just a foot off bottom.

WHERE WE FISHED: Lake Belton

SUMMARY OF HOW WE FISHED:

Mike wanted to focus on hybrid striped bass, so, despite a solid bite on artificial for white bass going on right now, we used fresh caught threadfin shad for most of the morning.

Aside from increasing the odds of catching hybrid stripers, live bait does typically produce better quality fish. Part of the reason for this is because I net enough bait to allow me to be picky in those I actually place in the livewell for later use. By choosing only larger shad, many smaller fish are put off by the size of that forage, hence the bait gets left alone long enough for a larger fish to come and grab it.

We fished two areas through 10 AM. At the first, in about 25 feet of water, the fish presented on sonar on the bottom. At the second location, I saw the fish suspended between 25 and 40 feet deep over a deeper bottom. In this case, I had everyone carefully hand strip exactly 25 to 30 feet of line off their reels so the bait would be in the midst of this band of fish.

At around 9:30, and with 62 fish already landed, I saw a very large school of white bass on sonar. I offered to everyone that we could very quickly put a lot of fish in the boat and still leave about an hour to continue fishing live bait for better quality fish. Everyone was good with this, so, I switched everyone over to spinning reels with MAL Heavy lures tied on (chartreuse tail/silver blade). At exactly 10:01, our 100th fish came aboard putting that 31 minute catch rate at over a fish per minute.

From that point through 11:10 we left those fish to continue on with live shad and picked up a final 17 fish, including our largest fish of the trip, an 11.5 pound blue cat which Randall landed while using live shad.

As as often in the case when using live bait, we caught a mixed bag of fish today, including white bass, hybrid striped bass, largemouth bass, blue catfish, one yellow catfish, and a freshwater drum.

This four man crew’s final total was 118 fish with all fish caught and released.

RESULTS: 118 fish, all caught and released


TUTORIAL VIDEO ON HOW TO DO THE “SMOKING” TACTIC:

TUTORIAL VIDEO ON HOW TO FISH THE MAL LURE WITH A SAWTOOTH METHOD:

FIND LURES HERE: https://whitebasstools.com/


OBSERVATIONS:

Threadfin shad spawn was going strong this morning on a light, but balmy NW wind at ~5-6mph with an overnight low of 62F
No helpful bird activity.


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 Friday, 09 May

0 feet 73.4F
5 feet 73.9F
10 feet 73.9F
15 feet 72.8F
20 feet 71.6F
25 feet 70.8F
30 feet 70.0F
35 feet 68.5F
40 feet 65.3F
45 feet 63.7F
50 feet 61.9F
55 feet 60.9F

WEATHER DATA:

Start Time: 7:00A

End Time: 11:10A

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 62F

Elevation: 2.57′ low (a 0.02′ rise in 24 hours)

Water Surface Temp: 73.4F on the surface.

Wind Speed & Direction: NW6 at trip’s start, gradually increasing to NW14 by 11A

Sky Condition: 0% cloud cover on bluebird sky at sunrise, with clouds increasing to 50% white cloud coverage by trip’s end

Moon Phase: Waxing gibbous moon at 92% illumination.

GT = 0



Wx SNAPSHOT:








AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

Area 1679 – 26 fish on live shad
Area B0271G – 36 fish on live shad and 39 fish on “smoked” MAL Heavies
Area 1819/1624 – 17 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

Smiler keep coming. Good job.

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