This morning I fished a father-and-son trip with Mr. Joey Rogers and his son, Coleman, on Stillhouse Hollow in pursuit of white bass.

Under tough, rapidly falling water conditions, Joey and Coleman Rogers were able to downrig a nice catch of 28 white bass on Stillhouse this morning.

 Coleman was given a fishing gift certificate by his mom this past Christmas and decided to cash it in in conjunction with his dad’s visit to central Texas from Utah, where he works and resides.  Coleman, who has fished with me a few times since he was in middle school, just graduated from high school and has his sights set on attending Colorado University to study computer science.

Fishing continues to be tough as the Corps of Engineers continues to let water out of the reservoir working to get it back to full pool after recent minor flooding.  In a recent conversation with USACE Lake Manager Ronnie Bruggman, the Corps expects to shut the gates sometime next week, barring anymore rain.

Fish are scattered and suspended, hence, we fished the entire trip with downriggers set from 25 to 32 feet deep with umbrella rigs equipped with Pet Spoon behind the downrigger balls to land every last fish we landed this morning.

The first hour of the day was very slow under bright, near-calm conditions.  As the breeze and cloud cover increased, the bite escalated right along with it.  Our peak period of success came from 9a to 10a, when we took our tally from just 6 fish up to 24 fish.  The last hour of downrigging kicked in just four more fish as the morning bite tapered off.

One nice thing about downrigging is that for those who prefer to make their fishing trip more social, this technique allows for that.  Coleman definitely coveted this time with his dad, and we all got to chip in some good fishing stories.  I believe Joey’s took the cake — he described how two “city slicker” with a big, fast ski boat plopped their boat in the water inside the no-wake zone and, once the tow vehicle driver returned to the boat, prepared to water ski.  The driver tossed a ski rope to his buddy who was now in the water with skis, and shouted to him, “Ski King, are you ready?!?”.   The skier shouted back, “Make it happen, Cap’n!!!”, at which time the driver gunned it and pulled the skier up on plane.  Moments later the game wardens patroliing the no-wake zone pulled King and Cap’n over to issue citations!!

By the end of our trip we’d put together a catch of exactly 28 white bass and had a lot of fun doing it.  I even got a good recommendation on a BBQ joint down in Austin!