SKIFF Trip #2013-3 — Soldiers’ Kids Involved in Fishing Fun (SKIFF) Trip Report, 25 April 2013







Cameron’s saying for the trip was, “Patience is a value.” Fortunately, we didn’t have to exercise much patience on this outing!

The S.K.I.F.F. (Soldiers’ Kids Involved in Fishing Fun) Program exists to take the children of deployed or deceased soldiers on fishing trips at no charge to the soldiers’ families as a way of showing our support for our troops and providing a respite for their spouses. The following is a note to SKIFF supporters about this most recent outing…

Thursday, 25 April, 2013

Dear Friends of SKIFF,

This afternoon I fished on Stillhouse Hollow Reservoir with Caleb (7) and Cameron (10) Rother.

These brothers are the oldest two of the Rother’s 3 children. Sergeant Chad Rother is currently deployed to Afghanistan where he serves with the 1st Cavalry Division as an infantryman. The boys’ mom, Jenn, works as a personal trainer near Fort Hood.

Today was the second day of light north winds following Monday’s cold front, but we enjoyed a wind shift to the ESE while we were on the water, accompanied by light but complete cloud cover. This Spring has been slow in developing with water temperatures still only in the mid-60’s.

We got going around 4pm. The boys personalities emerged immediately. Cameron was all about the entire experience, enjoying the boat, the surroundings, and the fishing. Caleb was all about the fish and only the fish. When Cameron landed the first fish (and the second) that didn’t sit too well with his younger brother’s competitive nature. By the time all was said and done, both of the boys caught plenty of fish and the individual tally got lost in the shuffle as I tried to stress that this was a team effort.

In all, we caught 76 fish on this outing, including 74 white bass, 1 crappie, and 1 diminutive largemouth bass. The first dozen fish we boated came off of Area 993 in 21-26 feet of water. We downrigged for these fish until we found a concentration of them, then buoyed that concentration and worked vertically using a “smoking” tactic with a TNT180 slab (3/4 oz. white) to take advantage of what we’d found. When that action settled down (and with 48 fish now boated), we headed to Area 1017 where a deep flat drops off into the old river channel and again “smoked” with our slabs for our final 28 fish of the evening.

Earlier this morning I was asked to do a live radio broadcast on Fort Hood’s own 24/7 on-line radio station(FortHoodRadio.com). We recorded a 35 minute segment as we interviewed live so the edited segment can be replayed continuously. The radio station personnel will also be feeding the interview to 15 local ClearChannel civilian radio stations on Saturday and Sunday, May 4th and 5th. The DJ’s I interviewed with requested “just off the water” photos, so I was able to supply them with a few shots of Caleb and Cameron’s successes. It was a good day for SKIFF today in more ways than one!

Note about Photographs: Due to the limitations of this blog, I can only post so many photos in a given entry, so, in order to share ALL photos from EACH trip, I’ve created a Facebook page. There you’ll find essentially the same trip summary with more photos to document each trip. Click here to visit…

See all photos on Facebook


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TODAY’S CONDITIONS:

Start Time: 4:00p

End Time: 8:15p

Air Temp: 66F at trip’s start.

Water Surface Temp: ~66.2F

Wind: Winds were light from the NNE at around 7-8, shifting ESE8-9 by 4:30, then slowly tapering to light and variable by sunset.

Skies: Skies were 100% greyed over.








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