Breakin’ in the Rookie — 31 Fish — Stillhouse Hollow Fishing Report






This morning I met up with Mike S. of Georgetown, TX, and Keyshawn, a young man Mike is mentoring through the “Big Brothers” program.


Keyshawn, and his “Big Brother”, Mike S.

No sugar-coating on this report … we struggled today. There is always a 2-3 week period somewhere around this time of year when the thermocline breaks down (some call it “turnover”) and things get really hit-or-miss before the fish settle into their cool season mode at mid-lake, and, unfortunately, we are now in it.

I struggled to find large concentrations of fish and, even when we did find some larger groups of fish, they were loathe to respond. This was evidenced by the fact that the majority of our fish came on downriggers today as we combed and combed and combed water to try to fool a few active fish from amongst a disinterested majority. Every time we stopped over a congregation of fish we found and marked as we downrigged, that group would give up just 1 or 2 fish (if that) and the remainder just would not “turn on”.

So, we took lemons and tried squeezing some lemonade. We did catch fish on the downriggers pretty consistently through around 9:20. At that time the sun brightened and a southerly wind picked up and some schoolie-largemouth began to feed on topwater on shad. We broke from the downrigging to work to lure these fish and did catch several largemouth this way. By now we’d landed 16 fish.

Around 10a, encouraged by the wind now blowing SSW at ~10 and the most sun breaking through that we’d seen all morning, I began searching over several deepwater areas in search of schooled white bass. We came up with nothing.

Around 11:15, we returned to where we’d experienced success earlier in the day and picked up a few more whites by downrigging, and a few more largemouth using sub-surface retrieves. We added 7 to our tally in this vicinity.

We set aside the last 45 minutes or so to introduce Keyshawn to fishing for sunfish with a pole and line. We headed to shallow cover and baited up with Gulp!. Keyshawn did well at finessing his bait into the nooks and crannies where these sunfish like to ambush from, and was rewarded for his efforts — he boated 8 sunfish (7 bluegill / 1 longear/green cross).

Mike, who recently joined the staff of the National Wild Turkey Federation, is a well-traveled and experienced fisherman, so, the conversation was most enjoyable today.

One thing is for sure — we definitely didn’t spoil young Keyshawn. He was exposed to casting artificials, downrigging, smoking bladebaits, vertical jigging slabs, and slip-floating for sunfish. He saw how we had to work for each fish we caught and realized there was a rhyme and reason to doing what we did and how we did it. Though a man of few words, Keyshawn said with a smile that he had fun today and the the casting for those buck bass busting bait on the surface was his favorite part of the day.

TALLY = 31 FISH, all caught and released


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TODAY’S CONDITIONS:

Start Time: 7:25a

End Time: 1:15p

Air Temp: 75F at trip’s start.

Water Surface Temp: 77.8F

Wind: Winds were S to SSW6-9.

Skies:50% clouds and very humid in advance of an approaching low pressure system due to bring rain for the next several days.



Areas Fished with success:

** 1265/671 downrigging with some light schooling by largemouth early and late

** 1252/1257 some light schooling by largemouth

** 1098 sunfishing


Bob Maindelle

Holding the Line Guide Service

254-368-7411

www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

Salado, Texas