Stillhouse Fishing Guide Report – 17 Sep. 2009 – 38 Fish






I fished a 1/2 day morning trip with James F. of Killeen. James is a U.S. Army retired Vietnam veteran. He’d just returned from a family getaway down at Padre Island where a charter trip he’d book turned up fruitless, so he was counting on breaking his streak of bad luck with me today.

Start Time: 7:00am

End Time: 11:15pm

Air Temp: 67F at trip’s start.

Water Surface Temp: ~77.6F

Wind: Winds were steady from the NW at ~15 at sunrise (obscured) and slowly crept up to 22+ by trip’s end.

Skies: Skies were heavily clouded the entire trip.

Environmental note: The strong low pressure that brought this past weekend’s rains has returned. This upper level low is keeping the winds and clouds firmly in place and is negatively impacting the fishing.

Bottom line: the fishing was tough today. We worked for every fish we caught and had a difficult time finding active bait and gamefish. Low pressure and the northerly winds brought with it always make for a tough time and today was no exception.

We contacted fish at Area 205 by way of downriggers. Fish appeared in a very scattered fashion (actually nearly randomly) with a bit of consistency at the 27-29 foot band. We ran Pets down among them and came up with a largemouth and 2 whites here before the sonar essentially went clean with no fish showing at all.

We moved over to Area 458 and found just a few fish holding tight to the bottom on the steep E. facing slope here. I ran the downrigger balls across the face of the slope in 23-24 feet and we came up with 2 more largemouth and a single drum.

By now we’d fished most of the protected water typically holding fish in this season and, with the wind creeping up past 20mph, decided to leave the lower lake at this point.

We headed to Area 120. There were swells and whitecaps here, but, if you really looked hard, you could see fair sized schools of white bass working the surface. These schools would number 20-50 fish in size, with most fish being just yearlings. We ran 1 downrigger down and 1 flatline out, both with Pets tied on and were immediately hooked up on both lines, both with small white bass.

We continued to see fish working in the churned water and quickly broke out the topwater lures. We put 32 fish in the boat in about 45 minutes’ time before they sounded for good. During that time, we caught fish on the Cork Rig and subsurface bladebaits. When no fish were visible on top, we used the bladebaits to vertical jig and continued catching fish from off bottom, including some more sizeable 11-12 inch fish.

By 11:15, the wind was at a peak around 22+ mph, the fish were done on the surface, and our vertical presentations targeting bottom-oriented fish were no longer producing. We called it a day at that point thankful that some “llth hour” topwater spiced up what was looking to be a tough day otherwise.


TALLY = 38 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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