11 OCTOBER 2008






Stillhouse Hollow Fishing Report by Stillhouse Hollow Fishing Guide Bob Maindelle

Conditions:

Start Time: 7:20a

End Time: 12:20p

Air Temp: 68F at trip’s start, climbing to 87F for the day’s high

Water Temp: 75-76F

Wind: An increasingly humid ESE wind prevailed today, starting pre-dawn at 8mph, building to 12+ with higher gusts by 11a.

Skies: Were fair at dawn, with a bank of grey clouds creeping in slowly from the west. By 30 minutes after sunrise, the bank of clouds obscured the sun for over an hour, then began to break up, and the skies went partly cloudy.

I fished a solo trip today primarily to see if the Areas 160 and/or Area 209 action was going to hold up, and, if so, experiment with a few presentations to tempt the largemouth once the sun was up and they got more selective. Unfortunately, I never got the chance as there was zero topwater today – not uncommon for a day with an east wind.

As I sat closely watching the surface at Area 209, I was able to jig up 4 largemouth and a drum on a slab, but these fish were tight to bottom and were very sluggish.

I spent more time looking at sonar today than fishing, searching the lower basin area for baitfish, and found very little there.

I then searched the major breakline at Area 261, and finally located bait and gamefish consistently in 37 to 42 feet. As I began jigging over these fish, they were very sluggish, but did have a spike in activity from 10:30 to 11:30, and then went sluggish once again. I tied up a tandem rig with both a blade bait and a slab as the anchor and a Hazy Eye Shad as the teaser. This produced 5 doubles over the course of the slow period. I caught a 30/70 mix of largemouth/white bass here. All of the whites were healthy, solid fish going 11-14.5 inches, and all but one of the largemouth were short. The one keeper largemouth went 5.25 pounds. All told, 45 fish came off this area.

Around 12:30 things slowed to a crawl as the day heated up and the winds began to slacken.

TALLY = 50 FISH, all caught and 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