Stillhouse Hollow Fishing Report by Central Texas Fishing Guide Bob Maindelle

Fished both a morning and an evening trip today. The results are listed in separate posts.

Morning Trip – fished a Kids Fish, Too! trip with James (dad) and Hunter V. (son) and Steve (dad) and Samuel B. (son) in celebration of Hunter’s 9th birthday. I had a good feeling about this Friday trip as it was the first full day of clearing weather after a turbulent mid-week with rain, high winds, high humidity, tornadic activity, and thunderstorms. This weather cleared by noon the previous day, and, no doubt, there was a strong evening bite that evening.

Our trip began at 6:45a and concluded at 11:45a. The morning air temp was 55F and the water surface temp was 69.5. Suspecting that fish could be found shallow at least during the low light portion of the morning, and given that the pre-dawn/dawn conditions were still too calm for slabbing the humps, we began flatline trolling in the vicinity of Areas 110 and 116. Less than 3 minutes into the trip, Hunter was hooked up with a largemouth, and from then until around 10:15, the boys brought in fish after fish with a mixed bag of white bass, white crappie, black crappie, and largemouth bass, totaling 34 fish in all.

Hoping to introduce the boys to another technique and given that the wind was now steady at 8-10 out of the NNW, we put a hold on trolling and headed out to slab over a few humps. We searched 3 typically solid areas (54, 108, and 103) and didn’t see much on sonar … I was now concerned that the previous evening feed had been so good that this morning’s feed was going to be light. We ran sonar over Area 131 and did see some bottom hugging fish in ~32 feet, so we let the slabs down and managed 12 fish here including 8 white bass and 4 drum, however, the fish were sluggish and there weren’t a whole bunch of them.

I gave the boys the option of looking for fish elsewhere and slabbing for them, or going back to trolling. They chose trolling, so we hit Area 999 with only one missed fish to show for the effort, and we hit Area 144 with only a small largemouth resulting. Around 11:00, we returned to Area 110/116 and found some larger fish had moved in. Our last four fish were the largest of the day and included a solid 11 inch black crappie, two 13 inch white bass, and a nice 2.75 pound largemouth.

The boys were very well behaved, and their dads were real encouragers and were willing to step back from the rods and let the kids do things themselves which really made for a great trip.

TALLY = 50 FISH, all caught and released except 2 drum with did not survive after being caught from 30+ feet.

Bob Maindelle, Owner Holding The Line Guide Service and Kids Fish, Too! Stillhouse Hollow Fishing Guide, Belton Lake Fishing Guide, Lake Georgetown Fishing Guide, Walter E. Long (Decker) Lake Fishing Guide. Offering Salado Fishing, Killeen Fishing and Ft. Hood Fishing