Hey Opa, Look what we caught!! — SKIFF Trip #26, 01 Oct. 2013, Stillhouse Hollow Reservoir






This afternoon I fished an after-school trip with Jamal and Maurice Johnson. This was the 25th “SKIFF” trip I’ve conducted this year.



Jamal with one of the larger white bass we caught on umbrella rigged Pet Spoons today.


Maurice kept right up with his big brother and brought in an equal share of the catch this afternoon.

SKIFF (Soldiers’ Kids Involved in Fishing Fun) trips are provided free of charge to families whose children are separated from a parent due to that parent’s military service (examples: field time, gunnery, NTC, deployment, etc). These trips are funded by the Austin Fly Fishers and a network of supportive individuals from all over the U.S.!


Jamal, age 7, and Maurice, age 6, are the sons of Staff Sergeant Carwee Christopher Johnson III and his wife, Julia. SSG Johnson is currently on his 4th deployment and is stationed in Kuwait as a Signal Corps non-commissioned officer with the 62nd Expeditionary Signal Battalion. Julia is originally from the Bavarian region of Germany, so, the boys maternal grandparents (Oma and Opa) still live there. Evidently, Opa took Carwee on a fishing trip, resulting in the catch of exactly one carp. The boys told some big tales about this particular event, smiling the whole time. Bottom line, after that, Carwee was hooked on fishing.

Since the boys have good memories of the fishing trips they have been on with their dad, Julia thought they’d enjoy doing something they would normally do with him, while he is away. She picked the boys up at school and drove them straight to the boat ramp for today’s trip.

Our winds were from the SSE today, and that easterly component never helps the fishing out, so we picked up just a fish at a time for our first 90 minutes, catching 18. When the fish are really turned on, we’ll regularly boat doubles or triples (2 or 3 fish at a time on the 3 lures affixed to the umbrella rigs I use), and boat them consistently. When the fish get sluggish, that’ll drop to just single fish and even those singles caught with less frequency. Even though it was a bit slow, the bite was consistent, and the boys did well helping one another out. When one hooked a fish, the other reeled in the downrigger ball and vice versa.

I keep a close eye on kids to detect when their attention span is running out – usually when they begin snacking, then looking at and asking questions about all the gadgets on the boat or playing with the fish in the livewell instead of intently working the rods, then I know it’s time to change up. When Jamal and Maurice got to this point, we headed shallow to fish for sunfish. This was a big hit! Both boys had sufficient manual dexterity and coordination to do all they needed to do using the poles I have rigged for this technique. We rigged up with maggots and wore the sunfish out. We caught green sunfish, bluegill sunfish, and longear sunfish – 15 in all before the sun dropped below the western ridge near us, taking the direct sunlight off this area and stopping the bite.

We finished up the day with some sunset downrigging and had a short, but more productive, bite in the last 30 minutes, putting another 7 fish in the boat over that span of time.

We boated 37 fish in all today and returned to the ramp with 2 white bass to use for “show and tell” for mom, after which we released them.


TALLY = 37 FISH, all caught and released


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TODAY’S CONDITIONS:

Start Time: 3:45p

End Time: 7:45p

Air Temp: 90F at trip’s start.

Water Surface Temp: 82.6F

Wind: Winds were SSE11-13.

Skies: 30% clouds on a fair sky.

Areas Fished:

** 1240/1241 downrigging for first 90 minutes

** Sunfished 1256 for 60 minutes

** Downrigged 866-864 for twilight bite

**

Bob Maindelle

Holding the Line Guide Service

254-368-7411

www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

Salado, Texas








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