Deep Dive: The Chap Behind the App – 45 Fish
CLIENTS: This morning I welcomed aboard the co-founder of the Deep Dive fishing app, Braden Jenkins. Along with his co-founder, Jeremiah Howell, Braden brought this app to the market in April of 2025. Among other things, the app can provide anglers with past, present, and future data on a lake-specific basis on water clarity, wind effects, and flow. The app eliminates the need to hop from one website to another to gather such raw data, and it then forms that data into useful, visual formats to help make informed decisions on when and where to hunt for fish.
See it here: https://deepdiveapp.com/
Yes, the app is now on my iPhone!
TODAY’S DATE: 25 August 2026 (AM)
NEXT OPEN DATE: 27, 28 Aug. & 01 Sep. 2026 (AM)
PHOTO CAPTION: Braden Jenkins, one of the men behind the Deep Dive fishing app, enjoyed a multi-species morning trip on Stillhouse Hollow. Over a 4.5-hour span, we saw white bass, largemouth bass, freshwater drum, and channel cat cove over the gunwale.
PHOTO CAPTION: Despite light winds which often hinders the catfish bite, the channel cat bit hard and often this morning on our punchbait fished over chum.
SUMMARY OF HOW WE FISHED:
Braden recently moved to the area from the DFW area and now lives very near Stillhouse, so, he wanted to get a good introduction to the reservoir. He was not interested in Lake Belton, although that would have been my first choice at this point in the season. He was also not particularly concerned with catching fish … he made it very clear in advance that his main objective was to pick my brain about the flow of the fishery on this lake through the various seasons of the year.
We had a tough start, routinely finding fish, but having a rough time getting them to stay interested. Typically, we’d find an area with several small schools of fish present, Spot Lock in the area, draw a few fish in via the splasher, and present MAL Bridge Lures to them aided by Garmin LiveScope. This caught a few fish, but for every one we caught, many more remained disinterested, and even when we caught a fish (white bass or largemouth), even the frenzied movements of that hooked fish would not draw other fish in nor keep them beneath the boat. So it went for about 2.5 hour, during which time we landed only 6 fish, with on coming on a downrigged Pet Spoon, and the other 5 on the MAL Bridge fished with a smoking tactic.
Around 9:15, we broke away from the hunt for white bass and returned to an area we had chummed on our ride initial ride out to look for whites. We got the boat positioned right atop the chummed area and rigged up with punchbait fished just off bottom, again aided by LiveScope. Before we baited up, I coached Braden on the three pillars of tightlining for catfish: 1) bait positioning, 2) bite detection, and 3) hooksetting.
I have never had a client catch on to this style of fishing as quickly as Braden did. He hooked the first catfish which bit (which most folks don’t), and only missed one or two, thus translating a majority of his bites into landed fish.
By the time the bite began to fade on this one area we’d baited, we’d seen 14 channel cat landed and just a handful missed.
We ended the trip taking a parting shot at white bass in a different location than the one we’d hunted earlier in the morning. Although I did not see much bait on sonar, I did see a few things worth noting: flying/diving terns, schooling largemouth, and white bass showing tight to bottom on side-imaging.
Long story short, this turned into a fantastic finish with exactly 25 white bass (up to 14″) landed in our final 40 minutes on the water. Each came as they chased the MAL Bridge upwards either from bottom or out of a school suspended and moving within a few feet of bottom.
RESULTS: 45 fish, all caught and released
WHERE WE FISHED: Stillhouse Hollow
FIND LURES HERE: https://whitebasstools.com/
SEE THE “SMOKING TACTIC” TUTORIAL HERE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDSvfXgrAUE
OBSERVATIONS:
-No topwater action observed on this morning’s slick-calm surface following a mid-summer’s cold front passage on Saturday, 01 Aug.
LATEST WATER TEMPERATURE PROFILE TAKEN ON 25AUG2026 @ APPROX. 6:20A:
0 feet 86.7F
5 feet 86.7F
10 feet 86.7F
15 feet 86.7F
20 feet 86.7F
25 feet 86.7F
30 feet 86.2F
35 feet 85.9F
40 feet 84.8F
45 feet 81.9F
50 feet 78.2F
55 feet 74.9F
60 feet 72.7F
LATEST WATER TEMPERATURE PROFILE TAKEN ON 03AUG2026 @ APPROX. 6:20A::
0 feet 86.8F
5 feet 87.5F
10 feet 87.6F
15 feet 87.6F
20 feet 87.6F
25 feet 86.8F
30 feet 86.1F
35 feet 85.3F
40 feet 84.7F
45 feet 82.9F
50 feet 78.4F
55 feet 74.0F
60 feet 72.3F
65 feet 71.3F
WEATHER DATA:
Start Time: 6:45A
End Time: 11:15A
Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 77F
Elevation – Stillhouse fell to 0.32′ low, with a 0.03′ loss in the last 24 hours. Flow rate was 1 CFS
Water Surface Temp: 86.7F on the surface.
Wind Speed & Direction: S4-6 thru 10:15, then going light and variable
Sky Condition: Blue sky with <5% cloud cover under the influence of dry, high pressure.
Moon Phase: Waxing gibbous at 94% illumination
GT = 200
Wx SNAPSHOT:
AREAS FISHED WITH MOST SUCCESS:
Area vic SH0300G – 1 largemouth on downrigged Pet Spoon and 1 largemouth & 2 whites on smoked MAL Bridge
Area vic 2099 – 1 largemouth & 1 drum on smoked MAL Bridge
Area AUGCAT01 – 14 channel cat on punchbait
Area 2608 – 1 largemouth & 24 white bass on smoked MAL Bridge
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