18 AUGUST 2008






Stillhouse Hollow Fishing Report by Stillhouse Hollow Fishing Guide Bob Maindelle

Conditions:

Start Time: 6:30a

End Time: 12:30p

Air Temp: 76F at trip’s start, and only up to 84F by day’s end.

Water Temp: 83.5F

Wind: Light from the SE at 6-8, then shifting to NW and then transitioning to NE, never over 12 mph

Skies: Heavy grey rain clouds all day with showers from noon into evening. ½ inch of rain fell.

Fished a half-day morning trip this morning with 9-year old Spencer L. and his dad, Scott. As we met at dockside, I assessed both fellows’ casting abilities and equipment preferences, and then we got out on the water. The low pressure system that brought some rain, cooler temps, and heavy cloud cover had me a bit concerned.

I took a few sonar sweeps of Arean 206 that’s been productive of late, and there was not nearly the amount of bait nor gamefish that I’d seen in the recent past. Nonetheless, I stayed there until the light level was about right for any surface activity that may have taken place to begin, but saw none. In the meantime, we trolled with downriggers and kept a sharp eye on sonar. The downriggers didn’t fail us and we wound up with 2 largemouth and 2 white bass landed with another white lost. Once the start of topwater light conditions had come and gone, we headed for greener pastures.

Didn’t have to go far – at Area 217 we encountered multiple large schools of white bass with largemouth mixed in and stayed on these fish for an unheard of two and a half hours plus, thanks to the heavy grey cloud cover. Most fish were 10.75 to 11.5 inches, but very solid and healthy, and also very full of 1.75″ long shad. A majority of the fish we caught regurgitated 2-3 shad as they were being landed. A total of 72 fish came from this area.

At about 10:30, a sudden increase in the wind speed from the SE seemed to put a significant damper on the topwater action, and so we revisited our gameplan.

I offered a few options to my father-son team. They decided they’d like to pursue a record class fish for the Junior Angler category by way of fly rod for young Spencer. It took us 3 stops (Areas 189, 195, and 231), but Spencer finally spotted, cast to, hooked, and landed a small bluegill all on his own to qualify for a spot in the Stillhouse Hollow record books with a 4 5/8 inch, 1/8 pound sunfish. After meeting this goal, we quickly took several more small sunfish with the intent of baiting tightlines with them for some larger black bass at the end of our trip. We managed 7 more sunfish in no time on a bream pole with worm and quill bobber and headed out for some large black bass. At this point in time, we had a brief, moderate shower (no thunder or lightning) and experienced a mild wind shift to the NW.

As we returned to Area 217 in search of largemouth, we ran sonar until we found bottom-oriented wolfpacks of 3-4 fish each. We got the baits down and without having to wait very long at all, managed to wrap the trip up with 2 blacks going 2.75 pounds, as well as 2 nice 15 inch white bass.

TALLY = 88 FISH with all gamefish released

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