This afternoon I fished the 5th “SKIFF” trip of this season with two very nice young men from Copperas Cove — Mario and Gabriel Perez. SKIFF trips are provided at no charge for the children of our deployed soldiers, and are funded by donations and fundraising efforts of the Austin Fly Fishers based in Austin, TX.

The highlight of this trip was the capture of Mario’s pending lake record largemouth bass for the Jr. Angler Catch & Release category — a 6.25 pound, 22 3/8 inch specimen.

Gabriel’s best fish, this 3.75 pounder, pushed its luck one too many times after “tailing” several of the white bass we hooked to the surface.

Here is a copy of the note I sent to the Austin Fly Fisher’s following the trip:

Dear Ron and Friends of SKIFF,

On the afternoon of Saturday, May 22nd, I welcomed aboard 14 and 15 year old brothers Gabriel and Mario Perez of Copperas Cove. I met them and their parents at the 2010 Bell County Boat Show where their dad, Lieutenant Colonel Mario Perez, signed them up for a SKIFF trip. LTC Perez has already served two tours in Iraq, is in Death Valley with the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment right now, and, once business is finished there, will immediately head for Afghanistan where he’ll be until at least September of 2011.

The boys and their dad fish very regularly in the several ponds on Fort Hood, but, with dad gone, and mom not being “outdoorsy”, they haven’t had the opportunity to fish very much and so were very excited about the prospects of this trip.

We met at Stillhouse around 4:45p and started off fishing for sunfish around Area 203. I quickly realized by watching the boys cast, set the hook, and by listening to their “fishy” vocabulary, that these boys were no rookies. As I asked them about their experience level, they shared with me that they fish every chance they get and of their plans about pooling their money from summer jobs to buy a jonboat so that when Mario turns 16 and can drive, the two of them could continue fishing while dad was deployed! Hey, these were my kind of kids!! I realized we needed to step things up a bit, so, with 4 sunfish landed in mere minutes, we headed out after some higher caliber quarry.

We headed out to Area 638 and there in 36-38 feet of water, we saw the bottom was covered with active gamefish. We threw out a marker buoy, got set up over the fish and got our slabs down to bottom. The fish were raring to go!! We sat on that spot and landed exactly 99 white bass in two and a half hours until the already strong SSW wind cranked up to over 20 and we had to move locations. The fish we caught responded well to both a jigging approach and to a lift-drop method as we used TNT 180 slabs in the 3/8 oz. size.

We then went in search of fish in areas less impacted by the wind. We searched 3 different areas with sonar revealing nothing. Finally, we found a bottom-hugging school of fish at Area 639 at around 7:15 pm. I had some live baits in the livewell and knew the largemouth activity would be picking up with sunset approaching, so we baited up and put 3 downlines down in rodholders. We got hit almost immediately on 2 of the 3 rods, both resulting in boated white bass going ~14″. We rebaited and waited a bit, again, 2 rods went down — a 3.75 pound largemouth for Gabriel (photo attached) and a short black bass this time. And so it went until, as sunset approached, we put our largest baits on. This time, Mario’s rod went down — way down!! It was literally bent to the butt with 4 of the 6 guides on the rod being pulled down into the water before he got his hands on it.

Mario fought the fish well and brought to net a 6.25 pound 22 3/8 inch largemouth (photo attached)!!

This trip involved a number of “firsts” for SKIFF. This was the single most productive SKIFF trip thus far, besting the previous high catch of 93 fish. This trip also saw the largest black bass we’ve ever landed on a SKIFF trip come to net, in fact, Mario’s bass is now the pending Jr. Angler record in the Catch & Release category for Stillhouse Hollow.

When all was said and done we’d boated 113 fish including 4 largemouth, 4 sunfish, and 105 white bass.

I can’t thank you enough for giving these kids the opportunity to experience the outdoors locally, and especially in the unique and sometimes difficult circumstances presented with mom or dad gone for extended periods of time.

Sincerely,

Bob Maindelle