Free Fishing for Soldiers’ Kids — 74 Fish on Stillhouse

This morning, Thursday, July 20th, I welcomed aboard Mrs. Mary Tenorio and her two daughters, 9-year-old Elianna, and 5-year-old Abrianna.

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Mrs. Mary Tenorio and her two daughters, Abrianna (left) and Elianna (right) with a trio of the white bass we landed during their SKIFF trip on Stillhouse this morning.

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Elianna with a plump, feisty largemouth bass.

The girls’ father, US Army Staff Sergeant Rafael Tenorio, is a non-commissioned officer in the Field Artillery currently deployed to South Korea.  He headed out just weeks after the family relocated to Ft. Hood from Ft. Campbell, KY.

The girls had a little prior fishing experience, so we built on that this morning.

Over the 4 hours on the water we employed downrigging and vertical jigging to target white bass, and slipfloats up shallow to target sunfish.

We devoted the first 3 hours to chasing white bass and wound up with 66 fish caught via downrigging and vertical jigging including 63 white bass, 2 freshwater drum, and 1 largemouth bass.  About 75% of these came on the twin downriggers, each equipped with a 3-armed umbrella rig, thus putting 6 baits in the water at any given time.  The balance of these fish came on a “smoking” retrieve as we sat hovering atop heavily schooled white bass using the Minn Kota Spot Lock feature on my Ulterra trolling motor.

Around fish number 50, Abrianna conked out on us and assumed a horizontal rest position under a pile of windbreakers on the seat in front of the console, leaving big sister Elianna to do all the heavy lifting on the fish, assisted by mom whenever two rods went off with fish at the same time.

With about 50 minutes or so remaining on the water, we transitioned over to fishing for sunfish up shallow.  Elianna helped cut the livebait we would use and did pretty well at roll-casting with the bream rod we red for this finesse work up shallow.  We added 8 more fish to our count including bluegill, redear and longear sunfish.

“Homefront” spouses with a husband or wife away from home on military duty (not just deployments) are welcomed to call me at 254.368.7411 to arrange for free 4-hour outing for your children.  Homefront parents are always welcome to attend, but are equally welcome to take some downtime from their own children and leave them in my care for this time on the water.

TALLY: 74 FISH, all caught and released

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 6:25am

End Time: 10:25am

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 80F

Water Surface Temp: 86F

Wind Speed & Direction: S breeze under 7 mph the entire trip

Sky Conditions: No cloud cover.

Water Level: 0.21 feet high and slowly falling with only evaporative losses of ~0.02 feet per day; 0 cfs release at dam

GT = 0

Wx SNAPSHOT:

20JUL17

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 1966 — “ground zero” for early downrigging out to an 80 yard radius for first 90 minutes.

**Area 1510 –“ground zero” for mid-morning downrigging out to a 50 yard radius through 9:30a

**Area 1967 – 8 sunfish up shallow to close out the trip

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

Twitter: www/twitter.com/bobmaindelle

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