Fished a half-day morning Fathers’ Day trip on Stillhouse today with Chris Kerbow and his 10 year old son Cooper. I first met Chris at his restaurant, Catfish Parlour, off FM2338 in Georgetown. I’d taken my wife, Miss Rebecca, there for a Saturday “date night” and we had excellent food and excellent service in a nicely done setting, so, when I went to pay, I asked to speak to the manager intending to let him know that my first impression of his operation was that things were really squared away. To my surprise the owner was on site and came to speak with me — that was Chris. We compared notes about being in small business and, long story short, we visited about getting his boy Cooper on the water soon after school was out. Today was the day!
The Kerbow Boys landed 61 today. Downrigging treated us the best with 27 feet being the magic depth.
Start Time: 6:20a
End Time: 12:30p
Air Temp: 74F at trip’s start.
Water Surface Temp: ~82-83F
Wind: Winds were SSW at 9-13 the entire trip.
Skies: Skies were partly cloudy in the morning with a grey cloud bank in the eastern sky. The sun rose above this within 10 minutes and very sparse clouds remained with mostly sunny, bright conditions the remainder of the trip.
Due to the calmer and brighter weather forecast for today, we began a bit early today — at 6:20am, so we had a few minutes for casting lessons and could still get to the fish before they came up on topwater. The fellows both got the hang of casting both Spooks and Cork Rigs with spinning reels at dockside, so we ventured out.
At 6:41am I spotted the first topwater school of white bass pushing shad. The topwater action waxed and waned but never stopped from then until 8:56am. During this time we fish both Area 057 and Area 466 and managed 19 fish on topwater by the time it all ended. The catch was a 1:2 mix of whites:largemouth.
Once the topwater settled down, we headed to Area 239 where Cooper caught a few sunfish on a bream pole. We then headed back out onto the main lake to put those sunfish to work trying to catch something a bit larger. We drifted from SW to NE from off of Area 222 right up onto Area 007. Live bait fishing can be fun when the fish are really turned on to it, but today wasn’t one of those days. We spent about 20 minutes on a single, long drift and caught a nice largemouth and a nice white bass for our efforts, but decided to give something else a try once the novelty of that technique had worn off for Cooper.
At 10:05 we began downrigging. We chose a N-S oriented elipse from Area 462 to Area 217 after seeing abundant shad and gamefish sandwiched between 26 and 31 feet deep all over this area. In summary, after 2 1/2 hours of downrigging, we had brought our 2-man tally up to 58 fish including a 4.25 and 4.75 pound largemouth, and several white bass over 15 inches.
Just after noon things began winding down pretty quickly — I suggested the boys try to catch one more fish a piece on the downriggers and then we could head back to Area 239 to let Cooper do some more bream fishing as I got the boat neatened up, etc. With that, Chris immediately hooked into a white bass, and caught and released it, then racked up his rod. Now, all eyes were on Cooper. We covered about 60 yards from where dad’s white bass had come over the side and then it happened — Cooper’s rod began jerking. He cleared the line and the fight was on. Moments later what came aboard for these fellows whose survival counts on catfish but a crankbait-busting channel cat of about 11 inches in length!! Kind of an appropriate ending to a great day on the lake with some good people.
We packed up, got Cooper 3 more sunfish (a green, a bluegill, and a longear) and then called it a good day with 61 fish grand total to show for our efforts.
TALLY = 61 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