Texas Classic Bass Club May Tournament on Lake Belton

I fished the Texas Classic Bass Club May Tournament few weeks ago Saturday on Belton. The weather was typical for May, cloud cover and scattered rain showers forecasted. Water temps near 80 degrees and water clarity clear to 4 ft on the lower end. The lake is fishing very well lately. I fished with Bill Gibson from the club.

The Tournament:

I woke up ready to fish as soon as my eyes popped open. I had a feeling it was going to be a great day of fishing since the weather was going to be nice after the storms passed. Bill and I met at 5:30 AM. I started fishing on a point and worked my way into a creek. As we started fishing we notices shad were spawning along the shoreline by the hundreds. I picked up a spinnerbait and started catching white bass to 18 inches on cast after cast. At some point as we worked our way into the creek I suggested Bill put on a popper and see if he could get a bass to hit it since we were seeing the bass bust the schools of shad along the shore. Bill made a few casts with the popper and it disappeared in large explosive splash as a 4 lb bass inhaled the lure. After a short fight I scooped the fish up in the net and we were really excited about our first keeper, so high fives were exchanged then we got back to fishing. I proceeded to catch white bass using a combination of the spinnerbait and a top water popper while Bill alternated between his popper and a grub rigged on a jig head. Bill saw a bass hit a shad out in the middle of the creek and threw the grub at it. Seconds after the lure enter the surface he felt a tug on the line and Bill caught our second keeper. We made our way to the back of the creek and continued catching bass and white bass, but nothing that we could bring to weigh-in. We started making our way out of the creek and Bill caught a nice 3 lb small mouth bass on the popper. A short distance later Bill hooked another large bass with the popper, but it was able to jump and shake the lure free. It looked to be a small mouth bass about 3 lbs. We fished around in the creek for another hour and the bite seemed to slow down. On another trip into the back of the creek Bill threw his popper to the head of the creek where a small mouth bass hit the lure as soon as Bill twitched the line. We fished out of the creek and the shad had all disappeared into the deeper waters of the lake. I decided to try a jig for a while and was able to get a bass to hit the lure. It felt like a large fish, but pulled off after a short fight. I decided at that point that we needed to change locations and hit another creek on the other side of the lake. We fished into the back of the creek and on the way back out Bill caught another small mouth bass to fill our limit. I saw some schooling action off the end of point and threw a weightless senko to the spot. After letting it flutter down a little, the line began to run off to the side, so I set the hook on my first keeper size bass of the day, but it was smaller than the bass we had in the live well. We tried several other places and killed a lot of time. With just an hour and a half left in the tournament we decided to load the boat and trailer to the weigh-in location. We arrived with an hour left in the tournament and decided to launch the boat at Cedar Ridge park. I caught 3 short bass out of the marina on a grub pretty quickly and with just 5 minutes left in the tournament I sent the hook on one last keeper size bass, but it wasn't large enough to help our total weight.


Tournament in Review:

We think we caught about 30 bass or more over the day, didn't keep count of white bass. We caught our fish on a combination of lures, but most of the keepers were caught on the popper Bill used. Bill and I caught five keepers going 12.36 lbs putting us in 3rd place.

Bill and I fishing in the creek. Photo by Kelly Bridges

Special Thanks:

Thanks go out to my family for letting me take a Saturday to do some fishing.