White Bass Go Hollywood!! News 8 Austin comes to Stillhouse






I was joined this morning by News 8 Austin on-air personality Bonnie Gonzales and videographer Drew Moses. Our goal today was to obtain footage for Bonnie’s monthly News 8 Outdoors feature. We were in pursuit of white bass today using downriggers which is a staple presentation for me all throughout the summer months. Fortunately, the fish more than cooperated for us this morning. We looked over a bit of water with sonar and found both bait and gamefish and got the downriggers down in the midst of both. Today, our key depth was 25-26 feet. There was a very well defined thermocline set up today and the fish were just 2-3 feet above it.

News 8 Bureau Chief Bonnie Gonzales and camera man Drew Moses pose for my camera with one of Bonnie’s white bass. Bonnie had never landed a white bass before today’s outing and had never fished with downriggers before, but did quite well with just a little coaching.

Bonnie was a good sport and a hands-on kind of person. She stripped the baits out behind the boat the proper distance, clipped the line into the release clips, lowered the balls to the correct depth, took all the slack out of the system and then kept an eye on sonar with me as we worked to stay on top of the fish and bait.

Within minutes of putting two spreads out (in a 150 yard radius, 90 degree arc to the N and W of Area 644) we had a release — and as luck would have it, it was a double. I had two tandem rigs out; one was a 13 Pet / 13 Pet and the other was a 13 Pet / 12 Pet combo. The double hookup came on the 13/13 and consisted of a white bass striking the lead bait and a largemouth striking the trailer. We got to compare and contrast the two species on camera and then released them. We continued fishing as Bonnie continued with informal interview questions pertaining to the lures we were using, the habits of the fish, different fishing techniques used throughout the year, the makeup of the lake we were fishing in, and more. By the time we’d boated 5 fish (4 whites and a largemouth) and missed one more largemouth on the jump, Drew let us know he had enough filmed to make a go of it.

So, our jobs done, we headed back to the dock and exchanged farewells. This piece is due to air on Time Warner cable channel 8 (a 24 hour news station) on Sunday, August 1st, and show one time each hour of the day in a 1 1/2 minute segment.

All in all, the uniqueness of this experience was very interesting to me and I enjoyed the little extra “pressure” of getting fish in the boat with a purpose other than recreation in mind.

We boated 5 fish in ~50 minutes actual fishing time and accomplished what we’d set out to do.

Today’s conditions:

Start Time: 6:35am

End Time: 7:55am

Air Temperature: 72F

Water Surface Temperature: 85.1F

Winds: S6

SKies: 100% thin, grey, low clouds








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