Stillhouse Hollow Fishing Report by Stillhouse Hollow Fishing Guide Bob Maindelle

Conditions:

Start Time: 6:00a

End Time: 11:15a

Air Temp: 76F at trip’s start

Water Temp: 83.5F

Wind: Calm at dawn, then going light and variable for the duration of the morning. This lack of wind made things a little tough as the white bass and largemouth bass topwater action was minimal as a result.

Skies: Skies were fair and bright the entire trip under the influence of high pressure.

Fished a Kids Fish, Too! morning trip with John (dad) and Hunter (son) of Killeen, and Hunter’s buddy, Justin. The boys were both 8 years old, headed to 3rd grade. They were well-behaved, learned quickly, and did well.

After greetings, my short safety talk, and some basic instructions for the boys on casting with spinning gear accurately, we headed out.

We first visited Area 160 looking for pre/post dawn white bass action on topwater and were not disappointed. We were only on site a few minutes before the first topwater appeared and the boys went to down looking for targets, casting, and retrieving. Although the action lasted about 90 minutes (thanks to a cloudbank to the east which obscured the sun for a while), we only experienced light topwater feeding. Most fish were in pods of 2-5 fish and didn’t stay on top long. As accurate as the boys were, they often were too slow in getting the retrieve going while fish were still near the surface. Nonetheless, we boated 8 fish including 6 white bass and 2 largemouth before the topwater died here.

Next we headed to between Area 61 and Area 222 and noted fair surface feeding beginning. We stayed on top of these surface feeding fish for about an hour. During this time we caught and released 6 largemouth bass. This action was also fairly week due to the super-calm conditions.

We changed up our equipment and headed over to Area 195 and enjoyed an hour plus of steady sunfish action on simple bobber rigs. The boys managed 66 sunfish including both mature and immature bluegill, as well as one longear sunfish. We kept 6 of the smaller specimens to use a livebait for largemouth to close out our trip with a shot at a big one.

We made one final stop at between Areas 61 and 62 at the 25-28 foot range. We encountered blanketing-type shad, not balled up shad, and disinterested gamefish within 2-3 feet of bottom. We had 2 strikes on the sunfish baits resulting in one missed hookup. At 11:15 with the skies heating up, the wind dead calm, and no birds, bait, or fish doing anything, we called it a good trip and headed in as the boys asked “When can we go again?” Dad commented, “I think we hooked more than fish on this trip.”

TALLY = 80 FISH, all caught and released

Bob Maindelle, Owner Holding The Line Guide Service and Kids Fish, Too! Stillhouse Hollow Fishing Guide, Belton Lake Fishing Guide, Lake Georgetown Fishing Guide, Walter E. Long (Decker) Lake Fishing Guide. Offering Salado Fishing, Killeen Fishing and Ft. Hood Fishing