This morning, June 13th, I fished with Mr. Joe Ybanez of Harker Heights, TX, and his 7-year-old daughter, Claire. Joe’s wife presented him with a fishing gift certificate over the holidays, and Joe decided to cash it in today before heading to Fort Drum for their next military assignment.
When clouds kept a good sunrise topwater bite from forming, we headed deep and found cooperative white bass ready to pursue our downrigged baits.
As we downrigged, occasional small packs of largemouth would break the surface as they popped shad. When they got too close, we got ’em on grubs and jigheads.
We met at 6:15a on Stillhouse Hollow and fished for four hours. We began the morning looking for topwater action but, as was the case yesterday, heavy clouds obscured the sunrise and kept any topwater action suppressed.
We next checked out the deep water bite with downriggers and found loosely schooled white bass in 35-42 feet of water ready to bite. We worked these fish for about 1.75 hours, regularly taking singles and doubles of white bass, with a few largemouth sprinkled in, too. During a few sunny stretches allowed for by breaks in the clouds, largemouth would begin chasing shad at the surface. This allowed up to pick off a few schoolie-sized largemouth on grubs and jigheads before the wind and more clouds once again shut that bite down.
After the downrigging at this first place we searched died down, Claire was ready for a change of pace. I searched just one area looking for white bass we could jig for, and, finding none there, we devoted the remainder of our time to catching sunfish in shallow water at two locations.
The sunfish cooperated well this morning, allowing us a variety of species (bluegill, longear, redear) and a variety of sizes.
We landed a total of 51 fish for our efforts this morning.
TALLY: 51 FISH, all caught and released
Wx Snapshot:
TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:
Start Time: 6:15a
End Time: 10:30a
Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 76F
Water Surface Temp: 81.4F
Wind Speed & Direction: SSE8-10
Sky Conditions: Fair skies with 60% cloud cover.
Water Level: 0.80 feet above full pool and falling; 400 cfs release at dam
GT = 0
AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:
**Area 853 thru 039 – white bass and largemouth on downriggers with occasional shots at topwater fish chasing shad
**Areas 200 and 1948 – sunfish on slipfloats
Bob Maindelle
Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service
254.368.7411 (call or text)
Website: www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com
E-mail: Bob@HoldingTheLineGuideService.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/bobmaindelle
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