Stillhouse Fishing Guide Report – 28 August 2010 – 65 Fish






Today’s “Kids Fish, Too!” trip was a reward for two hard-working kids, Stephanie N. and Jonathan M., both of Killeen. These kids earned this trip by being the winners of the “Bring a Friend to Vacation Bible School” contest held at Memorial Baptist Church in Killeen back in July. Both kids brought their moms (Monica and Grissell) along on this trip, as well.


Jonathan got his licks in first today, and show us the first fish he’s ever caught (on right) and a larger cousin that came along later in the trip!!

Stephanie holds a nice pair of white bass here. The one on the right, the first fish she’d ever caught, earned her a “First Fish” certificate from TPWD, too.


The morning was unusually cool for late August in Texas — only 67 degrees before sunrise, on the tail of a clear night left behind by a cold front that passed through over the past several days.

As the sun came up, the downrigger balls went down and we got right to work. The kids placed the lines the right distance behind and beneath the boat and the modified P12’s worked their magic on the end of our lines. Over the first 30 minutes, all spent in the vicinity of Area 176, we boated 6 fish before things went soft.

We headed downlake an worked from Area 041 through 205 and over to 644 with only one more white bass to show for our efforts here. I was concerned as the skies were bright and the winds were still — a really bad combination.

Well, we tried one more place, Area 458, looking for fish and shad and came up empty handed, so we changed over to panfishing a bit earlier than usual, but all turned out well, as both kids REALLY liked that kind of fishing.

As we began fishing with slipfloats for sunfish, both of the kids got the hang of setting the hook when the float was being pulled away and did very well as a result. We made 3 moves in the same general vicinity (Area 231) and found ample fish at each stop along the way. We stayed on these fish for about 90 minutes and boated a grand total of 54 fish here including bluegill sunfish, green sunfish, and blacktail shiners. The kids’ attention started to wane a bit, so, seeing that a SE wind was beginning to blow (the first wind from that direction in 5 days) I suggested we shoot for one more “big fish” a piece before wrapping up our day, fairly confident we’d find fish getting active as suggested by the wind direction.

We headed to Area 056, put our downriggers out (the kids were now aces at this) and in no time Jonathan was fast to a short largemouth and Stephanie had yet another white bass yanking her rod down. Both kids brought their fish to net and we closed things out on a good note with a total of 65 fish on the day.

Great job, kids, at being both fishers AND fishers of men!!


TALLY = 65 FISH, all caught and released