They Potty-Train Fish, Don’t They? — 60 Fish with the Trinkles

WHO I FISHED WITH:   This past Saturday morning, June 30th, I fished with returning guests Shaun Trinkle and his sons, Bradley and Wyatt.  The Trinkles are a military family spending their last few days here at Fort Hood before heading for their next duty station.  Bradley is 7 years old and Wyatt is 4.  Despite his young age, Wyatt hung in there for the entire 3.5+ hours of this “Kids Fish, Too!” trip tailored just for kids.

FUNNY STORY: While Bradley (7) and Wyatt (4) were looking at one of the fish Bradley just landed, the fish “spurted” some semi-solid grey matter onto the floor of the boat from its anal vent.  I asked the boys if they knew what just came out of the fish.  Bradley ventured a few guesses (water, fish, worms, etc.) but none were correct.  I told them the correct answer was more gross than any of the things they had guessed.  After they gave up on guessing, I informed the boys that the grey stuff on the floor of the boat was fish poop.  After the “eeeews” died down, I kidded the boys that fish don’t wear diapers and their parents don’t potty train them.  At this, Bradley “volunteered” a little something about Wyatt saying, “Yeah, well Wyatt, he took a reeeally long time to potty-train; it was a bear!

From left: Bradley, Shaun, and Wyatt Trinkle with 2 of the 60 fish the boys caught during their Saturday morning excursion.

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

WHERE WE FISHED: Stillhouse Hollow

WHEN WE FISHED: Saturday morning, 30 June 2018

HOW WE FISHED: We began our trip downrigging for white bass, doing very well right off the bat under low light conditions, then seeing the action taper off as the skies brightened.  We landed 18 white bass and a largemouth in this early bout of action before transitioning to fishing for sunfish up shallow in hydrilla beds.  The sunfishing yielded 24 fish as we used slipfloats to present live bait to a variety of sunfish species.  We wound up the trip going back to downrigging; as we worked our baits at around 26’ over a deeper bottom, sonar revealed a school of feeding, bottom-oriented, heavily congregated white bass.  I stopped the boat, put her in a hover over top of this school by navigating back to them with the i-Pilot Link connection between the Humminbird and Minn Kota Ulterra, and we fished vertically using tailspinners and slabs, putting a final 16 white bass and one more largemouth in the boat, thus ending the trip on a good note.

OBSERVATIONS/NOTES:

TALLY: 60 FISH, ALL CAUGHT AND RELEASED

 

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 6:30a

End Time: 10:10a

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start:  77F

Water Surface Temp:   83.4F

Wind Speed & Direction: S10 at trip’s start increasing to S15 by trip’s end

Sky Conditions: ~40% white cloud cover on a blue sky, decreasing to 25% by trip’s end

Water Level:  5.76 feet low

GT = 25

Wx SNAPSHOT:     N/A

 

 

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area SH0040C – 18 white bass, 1 largemouth on downriggers

**Area 189 and SH0038C – sunfish on hydrilla

**Area Sh0039C – 16 white bass and 1 largemouth; found fish via downrigging and capitalized on the find by fishing vertically with tailspinners and slabs

 

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@HoldingelleTheLineGuideService.com

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