This morning I fished with Wayne and Sherry Boultinghouse of Lampasas on Stillhouse Hollow Reservoir.
Wayne and Sherry Boultinghouse with four early-morning white bass that fell for Pet Spoons worked on umbrella rigs in 24-31 feet of water.
Both of the Boultinghouse’s retired from teaching in the Lampasas Independent School District, but, no sooner did that happen than a friend encouraged Wayne to run for Lampasas County Judge. He did, and won, and is now in his third 4-year term in that elected position.
Sherry contacted me a few weeks back looking for some “angling assistance”. The Boultinghouse’s have a pontoon boat in a wet slip at the Stillhouse Marina. They’ve got a number of grandchildren who love the water, but, it seems they’ve come up short in the fishing department and were worried that the grandkids would get bored with the lack of success and give up on the idea. So, they specifically requested that we fish Stillhouse, and specifically requested that I focus on covering successful techniques, and not so much on catching a mess of fish.
With this in mind, I set out to show them the 3 most successful warm-water techniques I employ each year from June through October: downrigging, topwater techiques, and (when kids are participating) fishing for shallow sunfish.
Stillhouse fish tend to crank up around sunrise, and, indeed as we got our downrigger balls in the water just as the sun was peeking over the dam, our first rod went off withing minutes under the weight of a nice, single white bass which Sherry brought in successfully. Wayne then answered with a triple, then Sherry got a double, and so it went until we’d put together a catch of 9 white bass and 1 largemouth in our first hour on the water at two adjacent fish-holding locations. With the technique and equipment now understood, we went to one additional location, so Wayne and Sherry would have a few places to start looking with grandkids aboard. At our next location we lost 3 white bass and boated one more largemouth.
Next, we changed over to livebait fishing with poles rigged with slipfloats up shallow for sunfish. Wayne and Shirley got the hang of this really quickly and put 13 sunfish of various sizes in the boat in no time at all. We retained 5 of these for “Technique #3”.
Technique #3 involved fishing “tightlines” vertically beneath the boat near deep hydrilla edges using live sunfish for bait. This is a better early summer (late May through early July) tactic, and did not net us any fish today, but, the point was to expose them to functional tactics.
The last thing we did on the water was to teach both Wayne and Shirley how to throw spinning gear and work a topwater bait with that gear for instances where white bass and/or largemouth school on the surface in pursuit of shad.
By 11:00a, we came off the water and headed over to the Boultinghouse’s pontoon boat where we looked over their equipment, including sonar, trolling motor, rods, reels, rodholders, and tackle boxes. In doing so, I was able to make some suggestions to help them improve their chances of catching fish with grandkids on board. I do believe a downrigger purchase is in the Boultinghouse’s near future!
TALLY = 23 FISH, all caught and released
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TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:
Start Time: 7:00a
End Time: 12:00p
Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 77F
Water Surface Temp: 83.4
Wind Speed & Direction: NW5-7
Sky Conditions: Fair skies, <10% cloud cover
Other: GT= 0
AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:
**Area 258/040 – sunrise white bass bite on downriggers
**Area 1246/484 – low light white bass bite on downriggers
**Area 668 – mid-morning white bass bite on downriggers
**Area 1256 – sunfish
Bob Maindelle
Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service
254.368.7411 (call or text)
Salado, TX
www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com