Family Fun — 54 Fish, Stillhouse, 26 March

This Saturday morning, 26 March, I met up with Skip C. and his family of Salado out on Stillhouse Hollow in pursuit of white bass.

Culp Family Easter 2016

Skip C. and his kids, from left: William (12), Katherine (7), Sarah (6), and John (8).

Skip had fished with me once before in 2011 with just his two sons coming along, after being referred by a friend from the Baylor Scott & White anesthesiology department.  Today, the entire crew came out, no doubt giving mom some much needed down time.  The kids attend Providence Preparatory School in Belton, which comes alongside home-schoolers to allow for a half-homeschool and half-traditional school approach to education for families who choose to home-school.

It was cool this morning thanks to a cold front that came into the region early Thursday morning, leaving skies clear and allowing for much radiational cooling.  As a result, our water surface temperature has fallen about 3 degrees off of the high reached last week during an unseasonably warm Spring Break week.

As we got going, I discovered that the very reliable shallow water bite that has been going for at least the first 70 minutes following sunrise for the past 13 days was reliable no more!  While the skies were bright and the winds near calm, we put a few fish in the boat via both downrigging and flatline trolling, but solid fishing did not kick in until around 9:15a when a bank of grey clouds moved in and the wind became steady at S8.

Once the winds began to blow consistently, I moved us out to deeper, clearer water, found fish with sonar, and we began jigging with slabs.  This bite stayed solid right up until 11:05 with all 4 kids regularly catching fish on the very simple vertical jigging technique I demonstrated for them.

At age 12, William was operating nearly independently.  8-year-old John needed an occasional check-up but was otherwise just fine.  I covered down on Katherine (age 7), after about 10 iterations, got all but the pretty exacting depth adjustment concept down very well.  Skip stayed right with 6-year-old Sarah for the duration and the two of them did very well together.

We made a few “short hops” moving forward, backwards, left, or right a boat length or 2 or 3, but never left this general area.  As long as the clouds and wind were present, the fish kept right on feeding.

By the time 11:20 rolled around, the sonar screen was clean, the skies were brightening, the winds were dying, and the bite was over.  We’d managed to boat 52 white bass and 2 largemouth bass for our efforts.

TALLY = 54 FISH, all caught and released

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 7:30a

End Time:  11:40a

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 53F

Water Surface Temp:  63.7F

Wind Speed & Direction:  Winds light and variable until 9:30am when they went SSE9.

Sky Conditions:  Fair skies with 20% cloud cover for the first hour, then 100% grey cloud cover for the middle 2 hours, then slowly clearing to fair with 50% cloud cover.

Water Level: 624.43 and falling with 622.0 being full pool.  Water being released at 1139 cubic feet per second.  Lake fell 0.14 feet in the past 24 hours

Other: GT= 50

Wx SNAPSHOT (a graphical look at the forecast that faced us today):

26MAR16

 

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area vic 109 downrigging with ThinFins for 3 fish

**Area vic 764 flatline trolling with crankbaits for 4 fish

**Area 108/1049 – vertical jigging with slabs for 47 fish
 

 

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

Website: www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

E-mail: Bob@HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

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