Hey! This Kid Can Fish!! — 42 Fish, Stillhouse Fishing Guide’s Report, 12 May 2012






This evening I fished with a promising 11 year old angler from Copperas Cove by the name of Austin H. Austin’s dad is serving in harm’s way at Camp Kunduz, Afghanistan, with the 4-227 Aviation as a staff sergeant working in military intelligence.


Austin was a very fast learner so we covered a lot of ground fishing for panfish and white bass with floats, with slabs, with downriggers, and with live bait, and he did well at all he tried!



Most of Austin’s previous fishing experience came on some small ponds up in Maryland, and on the Copperas Cove City Park pond. Until this trip, the most he’d ever landed in one outing was 2 catfish, but, Austin had the basics down already and was willing to listen to the more advanced things I was trying to teach him — and this paid off handsomely for him.

We started our day up shallow using a slipfloat for sunfish which have moved up into shallow water with the the recent elevation rise we’ve had. He not only got down the technical aspects of bait placement and hooksetting, but also quickly started to process where fish were likely to be and where they weren’t. He put 26 sunfish in the boat from off of a 140 yard stretch of shoreline (from Area 455 to Area 456, which we retained for use on larger gamefish later on.

Next, it was off to Area 760 where we encountered some bottom-hugging white bass. We picked up only two whites and two drum both jigging and smoking 3/8 oz. TNT 180’s here and moved on. At Area 800 we found the same scenario — a few fish, but no big congregation and fish unwilling to “turn on” once schoolmates were hooked and reeled in. We got 3 whites and a small largemouth here, also on the TNT180 slabs.

Next we moved to Area 122 and saw a lot of suspended fish at 21-25 feet and but the downrigger on them, but came up clean an moved on.

We ended up our trip at just west of Area 433 where we used our sunfish to tempt some largemouth on the breakline from 18-22 feet. By the time night fell around 8:45p, we’d actually only boated one largemouth, but found a bumper crop of solid white bass here, putting exactly 7 of them in the boat before calling it quits.


TALLY = 42 FISH, all caught and released

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS:

Start Time: 4:30p

End Time: 9:45p

Air Temp: 76F at trip’s start.

Water Surface Temp: 76F

Wind: Winds were NNW7-9 at trip’s start tapering just slightly by dark.

Skies: Skies were 50% cloudy on a fair sky.

Environmental Note: Lake rose ~0.52 feet over last 48 hours due to recent rainfall.








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