Joint Angling Operations – 64 Fish, Stillhouse, 05 Aug. ’17

This past Saturday morning, August 5th, I fished with Rob Mixer and Josh Dow in pursuit of white bass on Stillhouse Hollow.

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From left: Rob Mixer and Josh Dow with a pair of white bass we took right at sunrise this morning on downriggers.  The stable weather following Wednesday’s storms has left predictable fishing in its wake.

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Josh Dow with our largest fish of the trip, a 3 pound class largemouth taken from near bottom in 38′ on a slab worked vertically.

Rob’s wife arranged this trip for Rob’s birthday, initially inquiring about fishing on Lake Georgetown because it is closer to where they live.  Unfortunately on most warm weekends Georgetown is a wake-filled zoo due to increased traffic there which occurred when Austinites went searching for an alternative to Lake Travis during the recent drought.  Botttom line: we agreed Stillhouse would be the best choice for this weekend.

As I went over the several thing I typically review before we get lines in the water (safety, intro to spinning and casting gear, and prayer), I learned that Rob is a graduate of the US Air Force Academy and that Josh is a graduate of the US Naval Academy.  So, being a US Military Academy grad myself, we had a lot in common.  After the required chiding about this season’s Army football victory over Navy, we cleared the air and got down to fishing.

With a SSE breeze, little cloud cover and stable weather conditions, the fishing this morning was predictable and the pace of our catch was average.

We began the morning downrigging with balls set around 28-32 feet over a deeper bottom for white bass that were primarily suspended.  We caught singles and doubles in our first hour taking our tally up to 11 fish before we spotted largemouth chasing shad on topwater some distance away.

As we arrived at the scene of the commotion, the commotion had died down a good bit.  We landed 2 largemouth bass but moved on pretty quickly as the action was not consolidated enough to make it profitable.

Our third stop of the morning found us presenting vertically to the most heavily schooled white bass we’d find on sonar all morning.  These fish were on and near bottom, thus leading me to believe we could effectively use a “smoking” tactic to catch them with.  This did turn out to be the case as we were able to put exactly 33 additional fish in the boat (31 whites, 2 drum) using ¾ oz. slabs.

As this population of fish settled down around 10:10, we moved to our final stop of the morning, an area that in many ways mimicked the topography of the place we just left.

As I motored slowly over the area, sonar revealed abundant white bass, both on bottom and suspended up off bottom.  We took our first crack at them by smoking, which went well for another 8 fish, then, when the bottom action dried up, we closed out the day by making another few downrigger passes at the suspenders, taking our count to 64 fish.

TALLY: 64 FISH, all caught and released

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 6:25a

End Time: 11:00a

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 77F

Water Surface Temp: 85.1F

Wind Speed & Direction: SE4-5 the entire trip

Sky Conditions: Under 20% cloud cover the entire trip

Water Level: 0.17feet low and slowly falling with only evaporative losses of ~0.02 feet per day; 0 cfs release at dam

GT = 30

Wx SNAPSHOT:

 

05AUG17

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 484-444-660 early, low-light downrigging for 11 fish

**Area vic 1783 – scattered topwater action by schoolie largemouth for 2 fish

**Area 453 to 1085 – well-congregated white bass on and just off bottom – smoking slabs for 33 fish

**Area 1971 through 1440 – smoke and downrig for 18 white bass

 

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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