Stillhouse Fishing Guide Report – 17 Mar. 2010 -AM Trip – 18 Fish






I fished a half day morning trip with Jamie S. and her friend’s son, Nate, visiting from Oklahoma. Jamie is a teacher with KISD, and Nate is 5 years old. His previous best fishing trip resulted in the capture of 17 “perch”. We fished hard to get 18 fish on this trip so we could make this his “new best” trip — and we did it!

Jamie and Nate worked through some tough, calm wind conditions to boat a nice mixed bag of 18 fish this Spring Break morning.

Start Time: 7:20a

End Time: 11:35am

Air Temp: 50F at trip’s start.

Water Surface Temp: ~60.4F

Wind: Winds were light from the NE at ~3-4.

Skies: Skies were bright and clear.

This morning we pushed off at around 7:45a in the face of clear skies and a light NE breeze — very tough.

We were able to find some tentative schooled white bass up shallow in ~14 feet of water at Area 314 and boated 6 fish there before that quickly shut down with the increasing light level. We tried to allow Nate to do as much by himself as his abilities allowed, and he did pretty well at each technique I threw his way.

Next, we moved out a bit deeper and worked from Area 109 to Area 571 with a flatline and downrigger. We picked up an additional 5 fish this way until these fish also quit or scattered on us.

We looked over several areas without seeing anything worth getting excited about on sonar, and wound up returning to the vicinity of Area 571 to drift bait which yielded our final 7 fish, all in 18-22 feet here.

We wrapped up our trip as fish #18 — a nice crappie — came over the side, thus beating Nate’s old record.

TALLY = 18 fish, all caught and released








Stillhouse Fishing Guide Report – 17 Mar. 2010 – PM Trip – 67 Fish






I fished a family trip this afternoon with my brother, Andy, and my nephew and neice, Trent and Molly, all new arrivals in the Austin area. We got on the water around 3pm facing tough conditions, including clear skies, bright sun, and light NNE wind. We started out looking in deep water at mid-lake, but saw no birds, no bait, no nothing.

Andy holds the largest of our white bass landed today.

Andy, Molly, and Trent all pitched in for good results under tough conditions.

Start Time: 3:00pm

End Time: 7:45pm

Start Temp: 71F

Water Surface Temp: 60F

Winds: Light from the NNE at 6, shifting ESE and then dying to near calm, and picking up at SE at 7 with increasing clouds near sunset

Skies: Skies were clear and cloudless until near sunset, when skies began to cloud, working toward a totally cloud covered sky by the following morning

We took a close look at things at Area 601, saw a few fish on bottom, and stopped to jig, but managed only one small white bass here.

We moved on to Area 603/604 and found fish both on top of the feature here, as well as off to the side in as little as 15 feet of water, and down to 24 feet of water. We vertical jigged for a mixed bag of solid white bass and barely-keeper whites and bagged a total of 33 fish here for the effort. Fish were also found on the sloping bottom just yards to the north of this feature.

We experienced a very sudden wind shift as we fished here, turning out of the ESE at just 8-9 mph for about 20 minutes, and then going slack. The fishing took a nosedive at that point, and we then struggled until about 45 minutes prior to sunset. During this slow time, we drifted with live bait near Area 54, but came up with only a pair of crappie for the effort.

Around 6:45pm, we headed to Area 352 and picked up one largemouth and 2 white bass here on a flatline. I didn’t see much in the way of bait or fish on sonar here so we dropped back to Area 116/407 and ran 4 flatlines, keeping the Bombers on the deep side and the Rip Shads on the shallow. This turned out to be a solid combination as we boated fish for 30 minutes straight and all points along this circuit.

We ended the day with 67 fish boated. Our success was enhanced by the fact that Andy, Trent, and Molly have all fished with me before and all have the “hang” of vertical jigging down pat. This allowed us to maximize the potential we had for landing fish at Area 603/4 and put a lot of fish in the boat even when conditions were difficult.

TALLY = 67 fish, all caught and released