CHARLIE’S SUMMER VISIT TO GRANDPA’S — 70 FISH

WHO I FISHED WITH:   This morning, Tuesday, June 12th, I fished with Gary Morton of Temple, TX, and his 11-year-old grandson, Charlie Warren, of Wimberley, TX.  Gary is a retired anesthesiologist and is hosting his three grandchildren this week.  Charlie’s two sisters were headed to art camp each morning this week, thus providing a perfect scenario to spend some “guy time” with his grandpa.

 

Gary Morton and his grandson, Charlie Warren, with a sampling of our multi-species catch this morning.  We landed 70 fish, including 7 different species of fish.  Here, Gary holds a white bass and Charlie holds a freshwater drum, nicknamed “gaspergou”.

 

Grandpa wound up with the biggest fish of the trip — a largemouth bass taken on a live shad after a fast bite on artificial baits had begun to slack off.

Charlie was all smiles when this solid 2-year-old white bass struck his downrigger rod rigged up with a trio of Pet Spoons.

WHAT WE FISHED FOR:  This was a multi-species trip in which we caught white bass, largemouth bass, freshwater drum, and sunfish.

WHERE WE FISHED: Stillhouse Hollow Reservoir

WHEN WE FISHED: Tuesday morning, 12 June.

HOW WE FISHED:  As I try to do on most all of my summertime trips involving kids, on this morning’s trip I tried to fold in as many tactics as I could to keep things interesting while still putting fish in the boat.  This morning as the fishing slowly tapered to a peak between 8:30 and 9:30am, we did a good bit of downrigging and a bit of live bait fishing and put white bass in the boat slowly but surely.  Around 8:30 we found a heavily schooled group of white bass in about 33 feet of water, used Spot Lock to hover atop them, and vertically jigged with slabs and tailspinners.  This strong bite lasted about an hour, afterwhich we “mopped up” with a little more live bait.  When the novelty of this wore off for Charlie, we had landed a grand total of 50 fish, including 2 drum, 2 largemouth, and 46 white bass.  We “left fish to find fish”, leaving these fish while they were still biting to head up shallow for the final portion of our trip to fish for sunfish in shallow water using slipfloats.  This produced another 20 fish including green, longear, and bluegill sunfish.  We finished up right at 10:30 with 70 fish.

OBSERVATIONS/NOTES:     I noted 2 distinct small schools of white bass sipping young of the year shad off the surface this morning right before sunrise (about 6:25am), and another around 7:10am.  Otherwise, surface action has been very limited.  I’m sure some action has been obscured by the windy mornings we’ve had, but there is definitely not an abundance of topwater action thus far.

TALLY: 70 FISH, ALL CAUGHT AND RELEASED 

 

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 6:30a

End Time: 10:30a

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 76F

Water Surface Temp:  85.5F

Wind Speed & Direction:  S8-12

Sky Conditions:  Fully greyed skies at sunrise thanks to a heavy bank of clouds on the eastern horizon, clearing to 30% white clouds by trip’s end

Water Level: 5.00 feet low and slowly falling thanks to evaporation

GT = 30

Wx SNAPSHOT:     

 

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 1314 to 1961 to SH0020C – low light downrigging

**Area SH0019C  – vertical jigging

**Area 1572 – sunfish

 

 

Bob Maindelle, Central Texas Fishing Guide

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

Website: www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

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