Stillhouse Hollow Fishing Guide Report – 12 July 2010 – 26 FISH






I fished a morning “Kids Fish, Too!” trip with 8 year old twins Gabriel and Alex B. and their dad, Steven, all of Austin. I’ve had literally hundreds of kids aboard my boat over the years, but never a set of twins. These boys were very helpful to one another and displayed a great sense of teamwork that helped up put together a good catch on a tough day!

Gabriel stands by with Alex holding this trip’s lunker — a largemouth going just shy of 3 pounds.

The Brown Boys with our best 4 white bass.

The night before the trip I spent some time on the phone with Steven to understand the boys’ past experience and ability level, etc. I came prepared to introduce them to spinning equipment, but also prepared to fall back on closed-faced equipment if need be. The boys did well casting both, but, with the strong winds, we never really used either.

After casting lessons, we headed out to Area 061 and did a listening stop, but nothing was afoot (or “afin”).

We then started looking deep over Area 481 to Area 517 and marked both bait and gamefish and pulled our first two fish of the day here. Things thinned out over the next 25 minutes or so, so we headed to Area 205 to 444 and failed to find much in the way of bait or gamefish here.

We continued the search and finally got into some good bait and gamefish over 30-40 feet of water in a 180 degree, 400 foot arc to the east of Area 644. We worked this area over very thoroughly and in two-plus hours’ time boated exactly 20 fish including 2 drum, 4 largemouth, and 14 white bass. We lost 4 other fish. Our largest fish was a largemouth just shy of the 3 pound mark that Alex tangled with about mid-way into the trip. We fished today with a solo Pet on one rod and a Pet/Licker on the other rod. Not a single fish hit the Licker, and both rods caught evenly on the Pets.

By 10:45, with our 20 fish in the boat, the boys perked up at the mention of doing a little bobber fishing (something they’d done a bit of on earlier excursions). We headed to Area 239, used quill rigs to present small baits to bluegill, and boated 3 fish a piece in about 10 minutes. The boys both tried their hand at removing the hook from the fish using the “OK” method, and did really well. By 11:05, it was getting warm, and the boys were ready to call it a day.

They both shook my hand and thanked me for a nice trip, and summarized for me all they’d learned in our morning spent together.

TALLY = 26 FISH, all caught and released


Today’s Conditions:

Start Time: 6:20a

End Time: 11:05a

Air Temp: 78F at trip’s start, heading towards the mid-90’s.

Water Surface Temp: ~85.6F

Wind: Winds were SSE at 10 before sunup and increased to SSE17 by trip’s end.

Skies: Skies were murky and grey until around 9:30 and then began to clear to 50% cloudy with fair skies between.