Stillhouse Fishing Guide Report – 14 Sep. 2009 – 37 Fish






I fished a 1/2 day morning trip with Lance R. of Pfluegerville today. Lance’s stated objectives were 1) to have me review his tackle selections so he could better understand when and where to use the right tackle, 2) help him learn to effectively use his new downriggers and relate what he is seeing on the sonar to what he needs to do with downrigger so far as depth and trolling speeds are concerned, and 3) to learn about the lake and where to look for fish now and into the fall and winter. We accomplished all of these objective’s by trip’s end.

Lance with 1 of his 37 fish caught on today’s instructional trip in tough, north-wind conditions

Start Time: 7:10am

End Time: 12:20pm

Air Temp: 68F at trip’s start.

Water Surface Temp: ~79.5F

Wind: Winds were steady from the NW at ~10-12 at sunrise (obscured) and slowly crept up to 17-18 by trip’s end.

Skies: Skies were heavily clouded the entire trip.

Environmental note: Due to heavy rains from a slow moving low pressure system present over the last 3 days dropping 10-13 inches of rain locally, Stillhouse has risen nearly 3 feet over the past 4 days.

As we got on the water, we didn’t immediately begin fishing, but rather, I tried to get a feel for where Lance stood in his ability to interpret sonar and rig up a downrigger. With those things understood we then headed out hunting for fish and also looking for opportunities for Lance to learn “on the job”.

We first looked in the vicinity of Areas 70-71 (a deep water breakline). We graphed fish consistently at 33-35 feet. I strung out the first rigger and had Lance do the second. We trolled for a while covering about 80 yards of the breakline and only managed 2 juvenile white bass on the Pet / Licker combo (one fish on each lure at the same time — a tandem). Since these fish were small, I assumed the rest of the fish we were graphing here would also be smallish. This, plus the heavy winds, would make it difficult for us to interpret a strike at these depths, so we moved on.

Our second stop came in the vicinity of Area 196. We again found suspended schools of white bass here, but this time with a bit of bait mixed in. These fish were not relating to the bottom nor the nearby breakline, thus, they were very scattered. We picked up 3 fish here but I just didn’t feel like things were going to come together, so we moved yet again. I was glad to find fish willing to strike given the northern component to the wind and the great environmental changes the lake just underwent.

Our third and final stop came to the west of Areas 484 and 485. We got lucky in that we happened upon fish on the channel shoulder at the very point where we began our search. This has the potential to be a much more lengthy process, having to cover a lot of ground with sonar before finding fish and bait in the same area. We immediately found fish on sonar at 28-30 feet, with most fish hugging pretty close to bottom. We got twin riggers down and put 9 fish in the boat in no time flat including white bass, black bass, and a small drum.

After about a half hour of steady action, I mentioned to Lance that if he wanted to learn a bit about combining the use of electronics in a vertical jigging scenario, we would likely be successful based on the posture of the fish, but that’d we’d need to get right on it as the fish wouldn’t stay jazzed for long today. He was anxious to try this, so, we buoyed some active fish, hovered over them and worked them over with blades. We put a mixed bag of 19 fish in the boat, all on vertical presentations including a 70/30 mix of whites to blacks, as well as a single crappie. We did attempt a horizontal presentation on a number of occasions but didn’t land a single fish or get a single strike that way today.

By around 11:00a the fish began to slack off. We went back to downrigging and polished things off with 4 more white bass, all around 11-12 inches. All but one of our white bass came on the #12 and #13 Pets today. Only one fish struck the Licker.

By noon, we’d seen the best of it and, with skies darkening a bit and the winds nearing a peak of ~18mph, we called it a day and headed back to the dock where Lance got one final lesson on making and using the Cork Rig.

This wasn’t the most productive trip I’ve ever run, but I was very satisfied that, while facing tough wind speeds and direction on top of some great environmental changes (~3 feet of new water in 3 days) we were still able to put together a respectable catch.


TALLY = 37 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








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