Today’s success underscored the advantage of living on the south shore of Stillhouse and being able to observe lake and wind conditions from my house. I was able to time today’s trip with the arrival of the first significant winds of the entire week, and found the fish very active as a result. I hadn’t planned on fishing today, but, seeing these conditions starting to line up just right, I made a quick solo venture out there and was rewarded.

Start Time: 2:55p

End Time: 5:55pm

Air Temp: 74F at trip’s start.

Water Surface Temp: ~68.4F

Wind: Winds were due S at 9-10 mph.

Skies: Skies were fair.

This entire week we experienced high, blue, clear skies, and very light, variable winds due to high pressure being firmly in place.

Today, in advance of a disturbance moving in over the weekend, the high pressure began to break down, resulting in S. winds. Oftentimes when the wind begins to blow after an extended period of calm, the fish crank up, and today was no exception.

I fished 4 windblown areas, finding ample fish at 3 of them.

First stop came in the form of a downrigging circuit run between Area 035 and 161.

A prospective customer from Goldthwaite called me just minutes into the trip as I was steering the boat, and as I got to talking, I came up a bit shallower than I had intended, and, at the 24 foot mark here, saw the bottom light up with white bass on sonar. Up to this point, I’d boated 7 whites, all suspended, on Pet Spoons. I buoyed this concentration of fish, got the downriggers stowed, noted the area (Area 536), and began vertical jigging for these fish. I put 22 white bass in the boat, all nice, solid 12.5 to 13.75 inch fish and fairly plump — by far the best quality fish I’ve come on in any numbers for quite a while. All of these slabbed fish came on a TNT 180 in 3/8 oz.

After things calmed down here, the wind continued to blow even as sunset was approaching, so I headed to Area 089, and, just shoreward of this area found another solid concentration of fish, again, on bottom and in 25-26 feet of water at the base of the slope. I put 10 fish in the boat very quickly (only 2 were legal) and decided to leave these fish biting to go search out additional congregations of fish so I’d have a nice milkrun to make for the next several booked trips.

I hit Area 531 without result, then hit Areas 052 and 053 with sonar only and found nothing. By now it was within minutes of sunset.

I headed back to the vicinity of Area 089, but moved up shoreward and found fish on bottom with sonar in 16-18 feet of water. I jigged just beyond sunset and boated an additional 5 fish.

TALLY = 44 fish, all caught and released