17 JULY 2008 (AM)






Stillhouse Hollow Fishing Report by Stillhouse Hollow Fishing Guide Bob Maindelle

Conditions:

Start Time: 6:30a

End Time: 11:15a

Air Temp: 76F

Water Temp: 85.5F

Wind: Humid, light and variable at sunrise, then a light SE breeze building to and topping off at 8 by trip’s end.

Skies: Skies were mostly clear with 20% cloud cover; skies went fair by 10am and stayed fair the rest of the day.

I fished a ½ day morning trip with lady angler Charlotte M. of Crescent Springs, KY. She’s been down this way several times and has taken a liking to topwater fishing for anything that will hit on topwater.

Planning trips around topwater always gives me a little knot in my stomach because it is so unpredictable. A change in pressure, too much light, too much wind, etc., etc. can put the fish off, but, we persisted and were rewarded.

We got on the water before sunup and found the lake slick-calm and with an unobscured sunrise. This literally allow topwater action to be spotted from over a mile away when you look at the water correctly with or without glassing. We spotted pods of white bass and largemouth sipping ¾ inch shad fry over open water (60-70 feet deep) and up onto an adjacent deep flat tapering up from 45 to 25 feet over quite a span of water (essentially a circle with Area 56 at the 12 o’clock position and Area 186 at the 6 o’clock position).

Accurate, but not necessarily long, casts were required – this always seems the case on Stillhouse with windless conditions. The casts needed to get to the fish quickly after they initially broke water or they’d be gone.

In 2 hours of fishing we managed 27 fish. These fish were NOT schooling; they were feeding on top in small wolfpacks of a few fish per pack.

By 8:30 or so the action had died off. We went elsewhere looking strickly for largemouth feeding on top, but saw little. We agreed the topwater bite was over, and hoped to begin hunting congregated white bass with sonar to attempt to slab over them.

The wind was flat calm, and I just knew the deepwater bite wouldn’t turn on until the wind got going. So, we put on our polarized glasses and I introduced Charlotte to flyrodding for sunfish with a 2 weight. We had fun and put 20 sunfish of 3 different species (bluegill, longear, and green) in the boat in no time. Then the wind kicked in and we knew it was time to get back to the sonar and start looking deep.

We didn’t have to look long … after looking over 3 areas under light wind conditions, a nice SE breeze began to blow around 8-10mph and the very first spot we checked out under the now breezy conditions held a good bunch of fish. Area 202 sits in 25 feet of water with water up to 35 feet deep very nearby. The fish on sonar were up on top of this topography indicating willingness to feed. It took a few tugs on the slabs to get the fish going, but once they turned on, they stayed turned on and hitting steadily for 2 hours. While we slabbed near the bottom, yearling black bass were popping shad on top, especially from 9:45 to 10:30. In all, we managed 31 more fish here. We caught most of our fish with a smoking retrieve on ¼ oz. slabs including 3 crappie, 2 blacks, and 26 white bass, all 12-13 inches.

By around 10:50 the action really started to wane. We stayed in this same general location, and I continued to graph fish, but the shad began to blanket out instead of balling up, indicating the gamefish were letting up. We dropped a downrigger in to try to finish up the day with an even 80 fish, and hooked a yearling largemouth on a Pet Spoon, but he jumped off, so we settled for 79 fish for the trip.

TALLY = 79 FISH; all gamefish 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








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