Screening for White Bass – 47 Fish

CLIENTS: This morning, Friday, June 19th, I welcomed aboard three generations of Craytor men – Dan, Dan’s son, Bret, and Bret’s son, Ace. Dan is a U.S. Army veteran now living in Virginia and having served as both an enlisted man (mechanic) and as an officer (aviator) who flew in the transition from Cobras to Apaches.

Bret is in the banking industry in the Waco area, and Ace, age 13, is working his way through school and excels at baseball.

TODAY’S DATE: 17 June 2026 (AM)


NEXT OPEN DATES FOR FISHING: 15-17 July 2026 (AM)

PHOTO CAPTION: From left: Dan, Bret, and Ace Craytor with a few of the deepwater white bass they took this morning on a combination of horizontal and vertical tactics.

SUMMARY OF HOW WE FISHED:

All eyes were on the weather all morning as a slow-moving cold front pushed down from the northwest, firing up thunderstorms. In advance of these storms we fished under heavily clouded conditions with a SE wind shifting to NE around 8:40A.

The fish we found this morning were quite deep — 43 to 51 feet — and were holding on the bottom. I spotted our first school using down-imaging, and although we hustled to get setup atop them, they did not play. We got a few half-hearted chases and no more.

Seeing this, I decided to put the downriggers into action as a screening tool. By running twin ‘riggers over large expanses of clean bottom, I can see active white bass aggressively rise off bottom to chase the downrigged baits on both 2D and down-imaging. If the fish are aggressive enough to do this, they can also typically be caught fishing vertically by smoking MAL Lures. If the fish are not aggressive, they’ll barely rise off bottom and will let the baits pass untouched.

This screening worked quite effectively and put us onto two active schools of fish which really made the entire morning for us.

The first school gave up 7 fish, and the second gave up 18 fish, and the third school produced 22 fish. Once I found the schools with the downriggers, I marked them and returned to them with the i-Pilot Link systems. We then worked MAL Dense lures vertically as long as the fish stayed interested. We then cast out horizontally to whichever side of the boat showed more fish scattered about as shown on side-imaging. After that failed to produce, it was time to downrig once again.

The bite faded around 9:50. With weather bearing down on us, I moved us closer to our launch site and to an area I’d baited before the Craytors’ arrival. This produced several strikes on punchbait, but none converted to fish in the boat. By 10:40, it was obvious that it was time to roll with darkening skies and some sprinkles falling, but much more to come as shown to the NW on various weather apps I had running.

We wrapped up with 47 white bass up to 15″ in length.

FIND LURES HERE: https://whitebasstools.com/


WHERE WE FISHED: Stillhouse Hollow Reservoir

RESULTS: 47 fish, all caught and released by clients

TUTORIAL VIDEO ON HOW WORK AN MAL LURE VERTICALLY: 

OBSERVATIONS:
-With Tropical Storm Arthur now away from the Texas coast, USACE reopened the dam, releasing at 594CFS today.

-Stillhouse fell 0.03′ in the past 24 hours down to 2.68 feet above full pool

-Despite the Juneteenth holiday, traffic was about normal for a summertime Friday

LATEST WATER TEMPERATURE PROFILE:

Taken on Stillhouse Hollow at approx. 6:15AM, 19 June 2026…

Area 2500 – 22 white bass on smoked MAL Dense Lures (silver body, chartreuse tail) from off bottom after finding them with ‘riggers

Bob Maindelle

Full-time, Professional Fishing Guide and Owner of Holding the Line Guide Service

Belton Lake Fishing Guide, Stillhouse Hollow Fishing Guide

(254) 368 7411 (call or text)

Website: www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

E-mail: Bob@HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bobmaindelle