And the First Fish Award goes to …. 62 Fish, 26 March (PM Trip)

This Saturday evening, 26 March, I met up with Chris Meck, his girlfriend, Jennifer Hayden, and Jennifer’s son, Justin Hayden, out on Stillhouse Hollow in pursuit of white bass.

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Jennifer Hayden to big fish honors tonight with this fat, long Stillhouse white bass that fell for a downrigged bait worked down at 17′ over a deeper bottom.

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Fishing was easy for the first 1.75 hours.  We caught 55 fish off an area in 63′ of water during this time.

Neither Jennifer nor Justin had ever caught a fish before, so, they had a pretty steep learning curve to overcome this afternoon, but, they did great.

Afternoons lately have required near 100% vertical jigging, but tonight, due to some cloud cover in the west bringing some darkening of the skies a bit earlier than we’d normally encounter on a clear evening, we got to mix in a bit of downrigging and casting, and at a time when Justin’s 6-year-old attention span was due for a change of pace.

Our first 2 hours on the water was definitely the most productive.  We sat in 62 feet of water pulling white bass after white bass up on slabs.  Although this area has produced well lately, it had been giving up mostly small fish, but, today, over 60% were right at 11.75 to 12.25 inches, with the remainder being smaller.

Around 5:35p this bite shut down pretty quickly, sending us on a search for more fish that took nearly 30 minutes before we contacted fish again.

Once I found fish, they were suspended at 15-18 feet down over a 30-33 foot bottom, and required a downrigging approach to control the depth of the presentation.  This is where my #Cannon downriggers came in — instead of throwing a crankbait or a Hellbender back behind the boat and hoping for the best, this downrigging setup very precisely places baits right where I want them when the downrigger is used in conjunction with sonar pinging off the transom.  We boated a few fish this way, and then, for a final effort, we moved up shallow to check on low-light shallow biters, and found a few willing to chase our bladebaits.

Both Jennifer and Justin did indeed catch the first fish of their lives tonight, and as a result, Justin will receive a First Fish Award from TPWD.

Jennifer had big fish honors with a white bass that taped in at 15.25 inches, taken on the downrigger at 17 feet down over a deeper bottom and from amidst a large, loosely congregated school of white bass.

TALLY = 62 FISH, all caught and released

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 3:45p

End Time:  7:50p

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 74F

Water Surface Temp:  64.1F

Wind Speed & Direction:  SSE12-14, dying to SSE4 by trip’s end.

Sky Conditions:  Fair skies with 40% 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= 60

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

26MAR16

 

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 946 – vertical jigging with slabs for 55 fish in first 1.75 hours

**Area vic 798 downrigging with ThinFins for suspended white bass coming toward surface during last light

**Area vic 116 casting shallow blades for last-bite, low-light 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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