A Young Man’s First Fish of a Lifetime — 59 Fish – Stillhouse Hollow — 17 Sep. 2011






Ka’ni holds two of our 59 fish caught this evening. The white bass on the right was the first fish Ka’ni ever caught, and the white bass on the left, measuring 14 3/8 inches, is currently the largest fish he’s ever caught!

This evening I had the opportunity to take a young man from Killeen, TX, out fishing. His name is Ka’ni Wesley and he is a 10 year old 5th Grader. I got to know Ka’ni this past summer when he came to our church’s Vacation Bible School.

Ka’ni asked the Lord to be his Savior during that time so I’d hoped to spend some one-on-one time with him to help him grow in his faith. I found out later that he doesn’t have a dad in his life, so then I really knew I needed to make it a point to have some “guy time” with him.

Well, today was the day. We met at Stillhouse Hollow at 4:00pm and fished until just shy of 8:00pm. The weather was a bit turbulent with SW winds at 8-10 and gusts 2-3 mph higher with grey clouds and light rain showers in the the area.

As we got to talking, he told me he’d never been out fishing before. My plan was to start off with the very basics by fishing for sunfish near what is left of this lake’s hydrilla now that we are 16 feet below full pool due to drought.

As we headed toward the area I had in mind, I checked an area that had been producing well for white bass lately. I count it a blessing from the Lord that, in trying to create a memorable time for Ka’ni, we found a huge concentration of white bass right on top of a mid-lake hump at Area 762 in about 30 feet of water. Sonar just lit up like a Christmas tree literally minutes into the trip, and I knew it was going to be good — offering Ka’ni some instant success to bolster his confidence!

Ka’ni and I had done some practice casting near the boat ramp, so, he already knew how to hold a spinning rod, how to manipulate the bail, close it, and begin a retrieve. We put all these tasks into practice and in no time, he had me down 3 fish to zero as I coached and took fish off the hook and just watched him just having a blast with a huge smile on his face.

That first area produced exactly 25 legal white bass for us before the school moved on.

To add some variety to the mix, we did then head on to fish for sunfish in the shallows, and Ka’ni did well at that, too. We caught a mix of bluegill sunfish and green sunfish at Area HB002 using slipfloats and maggots, and added 13 fish to our tally before the itch for bigger fish returned and we headed back out to deepwater to find some more jigging action.

Right around 6:00pm after doing a bit of searching with sonar, we found fish right on top of Area 232, and it was game-on once again. This time we bagged 17 more white bass before weather began to deteriorate and I spotted lightning in the distance to the NE of us, over the Belton area. I quickly got us off the open water and hunkered down in a protected cove. We took lemons and made lemonade here by breaking out the sunfish gear again and putting a final 4 sunfish in the boat before dark fell early on this cloudy, grey evening.

TALLY = 59 FISH, all caught and released

Start Time: 4:00p

End Time: 7:45p

Air Temp: 90F at trip’s start.

Water Surface Temp: ~81.7F

Wind: Winds were SSW8-10 with occasional higher gusts.








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