Rock, Paper, Scissors — 26 Fish and a Solar Eclipse

This morning, Monday, 21 August, I fished a “Kids Fish, Too!” trip with Dr. Bill Johnston and two of his grandchildren, 7-year-old Cyan Johnston and her cousin, 4-year-old Webb Johnston.  We fished Stillhouse for a combination of white bass and sunfish.

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After winning rights to the first white bass of the day via a victory at “Rock, Paper, Scissors”, Cyan landed this nice 13″ class white bass from out of 36 feet of water on downrigged Pet Spoons.

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Shortly after Cyan landed her first fish, Webb came up with this largemouth which fell for the same rig our white bass did.

The two species we pursued seemed to be on opposite ends of the feeding spectrum today in that the sunfish were very easy and the white bass were very tough.

Given the kids’ ages and limited experience, I wanted to go for “instant gratification” and therefore elected to pursue sunfish right away.  We hit two areas and easily put 20 sunfish in the boat, including bluegill, green, and longear sunfish.  All were caught in shallow, cover-filled water with slipfloats.

When the novelty of sunfishing began to wear off, we re-tooled and headed out to deep, open water in pursuit of white bass.

My “Kids Fish, Too!” trips are a bit shorter and less expensive than adult trips, in that I usually plan for 3.5 hours on the water (if the kids last that long).

We put in about 80 minutes on sunfish, and I reserved the balance of our time for white bass.  Before we put our lines in the water for the whites, I let the kids know that the fishing would involve longer wait times in between fish than the sunfish did.

As we got going at our first area, we saw multiple, abundant schools of white bass on sonar and adjusted the depth of our downriggers accordingly.  We went over school after school after school and only on a handful of occasions saw fish move from where they were suspended, upwards in the water column to investigate the downrigger balls as they passed by.  Normally, fish that move to the balls will strike, and those that stay “hunkered down” will not.  Long story short, we landed only 1 largemouth and 5 white bass, and had a few additional fish that came off during the fight.

I moved to three other locations, finding suspended white bass at two of them, and finding those white bass in the same negative mood as those we encountered at the first area we probed.

This was atypically slow given our weather conditions.  Regardless, Cyan proclaimed a number of times that this was the “best day of her life”, and that the solar eclipse only made it that much better!  The kids were real troopers, hanging with me for an extra 30 minutes right through 11am as we tried valiantly to end on a strong note with “just one more” fish in the boat.  That fish was a 1.5 pound largemouth which Webb hooked in 36 feet of water on a tailspinner, only to have it rocket to the surface and throw the lure free as we all watched it leap just 4 feet off the starboard gunwale.

We’ll all be trying our luck again this coming Thursday as we head out to Lake Belton for a change of scenery, weather permitting.

We wrapped up with 26 fish for our efforts this morning.

TALLY: 26 FISH, all caught and released

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 7:00am

End Time: 11:00am

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 78F

Water Surface Temp: 85.9F

Wind Speed & Direction: S breeze 8-11 mph the entire trip

Sky Conditions: <10% white cloud cover the entire trip

Water Level: 0.38 feet low and slowly falling with only evaporative losses; 0 cfs release at dam

GT = 0

Wx SNAPSHOT:

21AUG17

 

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area  200 & 239 sunfish

**Area  vic 822 tough white bass

 

Bob Maindelle, Central Texas Fishing Guide

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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