Lake Belton Help

I'm needing some help for Lake Belton. I plan on going tomorrow for the first time and putting in at Frank's Marina. Fill free to PM me if you want/need to keep your info private. I'll be on the hunt for large mouth but it would be great to hook in to a smallie. I know its a deep lake so I am prepared for that as well. Thanks!

I just got back from almost a week up at Belton for the first time.. Here was my experience


I've never got a smallmouth yet, which is the only reason I decided to go up there. I had a whole thread on here asking what the trick is for smallmouth. Did everything I was told, and the closest I got to one was pulling him up about 10ft from the boat on a crawfish rattle trap and he shook it loose. Everyone on here says to fish early morning, late evening, or even better at night with black spinners. That one I had was late evening around 7:30-8. Right now the water is in the upper 80's. I saw 90 at one part of the lake mid day. I asked any locals I could talk to up there about smallmouth, and every one of the told me I came the wrong time a year. Matter in fact, there were a few guys at Franks I talked to that told me right now is not the time for them, to come back when the water cools down.

But, we did catch largemouth. Every largemouth we put in the boat were either on a texas rigged watermelon red baby brush hogs or a watermelon red finese worm on drop shot. All were caught on the bank in about 15ft of water. Most of them were actually up the river in creeks around Rogers Park.

I'll tell you this though.. Have at least one rod rigged up with a beetle spin or small spinner bait or spoon ready to go.... That whole week we were up there, white bass were schooling all over the place constantly. We'd be running the lake, see them schooling, and just stop and cast in the middle of them. Tore them up. When that school stopped, cranked up, cruised the lake to cool off, and you'd run into another school in no time. In fact, we put in at Temple Park around 6:30 Saturday morning. Buddy backed me in the water, didn't even have the bow strap unhooked, didn't even crank up yet. They immediately started schooling right behind the boat. I unhooked the front strap and just floated off the trailer and put 4 in the boat while my buddy went to park the truck. We decided hell with it, last day here, might as well keep them. Within an hour, we had the limit and were off the water by 8 o'clock headed back to Houston. By the end of it, that beetle spin has seen it's better days...

The largemouth were pretty slow, but you couldn't keep the white bass of the end of your line. This was as of last week. Have fun, it's a beautiful lake. I'll be back up there come late fall

@ dk2429- I read your thread about your Belton trip and saw that you did catch blacks. Thanks for posting up. It's pretty fun to throw down on some whites when they are schooling. I've been fishing Lake Waco because it's my home lake and only 5 minutes from the house. The water temp there is around 86-87, so I am sure Belton's temp is up too. I do like to fish Stillhouse but I figured I'd finally give Belton a try.

Went to Stillhouse too. I'll say, Belton has NOTHING on Stillhouse as far as water clarity. Yes Belton is clear, but Stillhouse is Belton clear x10.

Again, you'll probably hang a few largemouth, but keep a beetle spin ready to go. Those little guys are always fun to catch. The fight a lot harder than I remember too.

Hey all. Man, Belton is tough. Every October we have the Fishing For Freedom tournament, I would say there are at least 250 to 300 plus boats every year. You would be surprised at how many boats dont even weigh in the three fish limit, alot! Im no expert by any means, but I would say if you want numbers its good. If you want size, fish Still house. JMHO.

How'd you do?

I caught only one fish but at least I caught something. I only saw the whites boiling once and by the time i could grab my other rod to cast to them, they were gone. I'm not used to fishing that deep of a lake so that became a challenge for me, but one I wanted. I did have a few other bites but couldn't get them in the boat. One ran me straight into deep timber and broke off. I'll definitely go back.

Fishing deep did bring up a question, how long will you fish a ledge or point before you move on to the next?

Sounds about like my last trip out there. Caught one white (on a tube) when they started busting for a minute and I could barely reach them as I was on the bank.

I'm not used to fishing deep either and get discouraged quick. Even fishing shallow, if I don't get a bite somewhat soon I'll move.

At least you got one though! Pretty crazy to hear about the whites. Once they started schooling, we had enough time to bring in 4 or 5 before they quit. And, we found many schools. Most of them were main lake however. The last few schools we found to get the limit were at the mouth of Cowhouse creek main lake.

Honestly I had the same struggle as you as far as fishing deep. I'm used to Rayburn and those east Texas lakes where you toss a rattle trap up along the bank around stumps and other cover and hook into one. My initial thought of going there was to throw a medium/deep crank along 15-20ft drop offs but couldn't get the bite. A texas rigged watermelon baby brush hog did the trick though.

I'll go back as well for sure, but I'll still prefer the east Texas lakes. It's just the fishing I was raised on