Day: March 28, 2014

Hail, Yes! We Caught Fish!! – 28 Fish, Stillhouse, 28 March

by Bob Maindelle

This evening, immediately in the wake of a severe Texas hail storm, I fished on Stillhouse Hollow Reservoir with father and son team Robby (father) and Brian (son) Doherty.  .
 

With white bass suspended and on the move, flatline trolling was hard to beat as the technique of choice this evening.  The Doherty’s boated 26 white bass and 2 white crappie (L to R: Brian and Robby).

Robby and I first got to meet in person in early March this year at the Cabela’s “Great Outdoors Days” in Buda, TX, where I was presenting seminars on both sonar use and basic dock fishing for kids.  Robbie had viewed my website and had seen that I’d worked with a lot of children and felt I might be a good fit for offering a trip to him and Brian (who has some special needs associated with Down’s Syndrome).  Robby is an Air Force veteran now working as a contractor with the Texas Workforce Commission out of Austin.  Brian is a citizen at the Brookwood Community in Brookshire, Texas, where he resides in one of eight group homes arranged especially for people with autism spectrum disorders; intellectual disabilities; developmental disabilities, traumatic brain injury, and other adult special needs.  He is a sports enthusiast (basketball, baseball, and football, in that order), and works in the “Horticulture Enterprise” at Brookwood, helping to propagate over a half-million plants each year including poinsettias.

After driving through quite a hail-rain-thunder-and-lightning storm to get to the ramp, we all linked up around 3:45p, and, undeterred by the weather (which was now clearing from west to east), we launched right at our planned start time of 4:00p.

Fishing was best in the first 90-120 minutes as the pressure was climbing following the storm’s passage.  After calm, bright, warm conditions set in, the fishing got very tough until right at sunset when a short, low-light feed took place.

I had planned for a very low-tech approach today by using downriggers and flatlines to troll crankbaits amidst loosely schooled congregations of white bass slowly making their way up the little current now flowing in the Lampasas River.

We used Storm ThinFins on the downriggers, a #5 Rapala ShadRap RS on one flatline, and a 2″ Storm Deep Rattlin’ ThinFin on the other.  As a result, we were fishing with 4 lines down, and covering 4 different depths until trends emerged on what depths were producing the action.  I then changed up baits and downrigger depths to zero in on what worked best.

We boated a total catch of 28 fish this afternoon.

TALLY = 28 FISH, all caught and released

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:
Start Time: 4:00p
End Time: 8:10p
Air Temp: 65F at trip’s start, rising rapidly into the low 80’s as the skies cleared following the storm.
Water Surface Temp: 61F 
Wind: ESE6-7 as storm cleared, then calm, then N11-13 just before sunset, then going calm again as the sun set.
Skies: Clear blue cloudless skies following clearing of hail storm.
Other Notes: GT100

Areas Fished with success:

**   684 and NW to 405, and SE to 744 – trolling/downrigging for 24 white bass & 2 crappie
**   074 for 2 white bass on downriggers






Bob Maindelle
Holding the Line Guide Service

254-368-7411
www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com
Salado, Texas

Keep Your Eye on the Bird; 28 Fish, Stillhouse, 27 March 2014

by Bob Maindelle

This morning I fished on Stillhouse Hollow Reservoir with Jeremy Whitaker of Salado.  Jeremy is a kayak owner and regularly successful bank fisherman who typically pursues largemouth bass with artificial baits, but today I welcomed him aboard in pursuit of white bass.
 

We boated 27 white bass and this “lone wolf” largemouth.  Largemouth caught from deep water, like this 16.25″ fish was, are typically much more pale than those taken in the shallows.



Fat and sassy white bass with bellies full of eggs and milt were common today.

Jeremy and his wife have four children, ranging in age from 4 to 13.  Jeremy is a construction worker currently working on a renovation of the famous “Bell Tower” on the University of Texas (UT) campus in Austin.  He works nights, fishes mornings, and sleeps afternoons.

We were blessed today to encounter gulls feeding over top of active gamefish.  Marauding schools of white bass were working over a large, mid-depth flat feeding on shad.  As they do so, they often encounter sunfish still holding deep due to the cool water.  As the hyped-up schools of white bass encounter anything that moves and is smaller than they are, they attack.  This often results in crippled sunfish too big for the white bass to swallow being stunned and floundering on the surface where gulls make an easy meal of them and circle over the scene of the crime hoping for more.

We spent our first 2 hours on the water fishing under such bird activity with jigging spoons, and then, when the birds were done feeding, began trolling to cover more water.  When the birds finish feeding, this usually marks the beginning of the end of the morning or evening feed.  In fact, while the birds fed, we boated 24 fish.  Once the birds stopped feeding, we only boated another 4 fish in the last 90 minutes of our trip.

TALLY = 28 FISH, all caught and released

GO TO FISHING GUIDE’S FACEBOOK PAGE

RETURN TO FISHING GUIDE HOME PAGE

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:
Start Time: 8:15a
End Time: 12:15p
Air Temp: 60F at trip’s start
Water Surface Temp: 57.8F 
Wind: SSW12
Skies: 100% grey and clouded, heavily at times
Other Notes: GT0

Areas Fished with success:

**   401 to1364 – slabbing for 23 white bass and 1 largemouth bass
**   684 and NW to 405, and SE to 744 – trolling/downrigging for 4 white bass






Bob Maindelle
Holding the Line Guide Service

254-368-7411
www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com
Salado, Texas