Ahh! To be Free of the “Gris-Gris” — 107 Fish, Stillhouse Hollow Fishing Guide Report, 19 June 2013






This morning I fished with a very nice young couple, John and Lauren V., both originally from Louisiana.


The white bass action was white hot today — 107 fish in just over 4 hours, with most coming on topwater!!

John is a Sergeant First Class in the U.S. Army, and Lauren is currently in her residency as a psychologist working at the Veterans Administration hospital in Temple.

Lauren contacted me about 2 weeks ago. She and John have been accustomed to fishing in the fertile, brackish waters of coastal Louisiana and have found adapting to the clear, infertile waters of our Texas Hill Country reservoirs a very difficult transition to make. Numerous bank fishing attempts have never netted more than a fish or two. While John was on block leave from his current assignment as a platoon sergeant with the 1st Cavalry Division, she wanted to get him on some fish and so booked the trip as a surprise.

We were originally to fish yesterday, but lingering morning thunderstorms that brought over 1.1 inches of rain prevented that. We postponed to this morning and we were all glad we did!

We started the day up shallow, sight-casting to surface-feeding largemouth. The action was so-so in the vicinity of Area 061. John started off batting a thousand by landing a fish on his very first cast of the trip, a chunky 13.75 incher, but it was tough going after that as the fish were well-spread and only stayed up for short periods. Lauren got a fish of about the same size and John had one more shake his bait at the boat before the topwater action by these black bass waned.

We moved on and were fortunate to spot some feeding herons taking both shad and white bass as the white bass were driving the bait to the surface, thus creating a commotion which drew the birds’ attention. In the vicinity of Area 660, we saw a roughly 3 hour long feed play out from start to finish. As we first arrived, schools of white bass could be seen here and there staying up just briefly. We threw blade baits and kept them up high in the water column to tempt these fish and did very well. Over time the feed got stronger with fish nearly constantly on the surface and bait running everywhere trying to escape with their lives. We continued using bladebaits as long as this lasted.

Eventually, as the sun brightened, the fish pushed down further in the water column but continued right on feeding. To account for the additional depth, we counted our bladebaits down and then retrieved them. Later, as the fish pushed even deeper into the lower third of the water column we used slabs to execute a “smoking” technique to consistently catch these fish now down in 28-32 feet of water.

When the fish were no longer active enough to be willing to respond to a “smoked” slab, we knew the beginning of the end was upon us. We broke out the downriggers and, with 88 fish now caught, downrigged for the final 45 minutes of our trip and put another 19 fish in the boat including multiple doubles coming on the tandem-rigged Pet Spoons we were running. By 10:20 even the downrigging was producing little and we knew the bite had run its course for this morning.

As we took photos, returned to the dock, and said our goodbyes, Lauren thanked me for “lifting the gris-gris” (that’s a Louisiana term for a curse, pronounced gree-gree). They’d had a run of bad luck lately starting with a stolen wallet a few weeks back and continuing up to yesterday’s rained out fishing trip. I am glad to announce this couple is now gris-gris free!!

TALLY = 107 FISH, all caught and released

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS:

Start Time: 6:15a

End Time: 10:30a

Air Temp: 75F at trip’s start.

Water Surface Temp: 83.4F

Wind: Winds were SSE4-5 until around 9:15a, then shifted SSW8-9 thereafter.

Skies: Skies were fair with a thin bank of clouds to the east only at sunrise.