Stillhouse Fishing Guide Report – 18 June 2009 – 54 Fish






Fished a half-day morning trip on Stillhouse today with Ronnie P. and his sons, Adam and Travis. All three run a family real estate and appraisal business in Killeen and are just very, very decent people.


A GOOD FATHERS’ DAY OUTING — L. to R. Adam, Travis, and Ronnie

Start Time: 6:45a

End Time: 1:30p

Air Temp: 72F at trip’s start.

Water Surface Temp: ~83.0F

Wind: Winds were SSW at 8-10 as we hit open water this morning and slowly ramped up to about 17 by 9:00a, peaked just shy of 20mph by 11:30, then scaled back to about 18mph for the remainder of the trip, turning SSE around 1:00p.

Skies: Skies were partly cloudy in the morning with a grey cloud bank in the eastern sky which the sun took about an hour or so beyond sunrise to clear; skies cleared for good around 11:15a.



I met the fellows dockside and right off the bat had them do a little practice casting so I could get a feel for their abilities on distance and accuracy and operate the boat accordingly. With a few pointers on technique with topwater baits, we were off to hunt for fish.

Area 061 began to show some activity around 7:00a. There was already a fair chop on the water. With untrained eyes, the boys found it a bit difficult to identify breaking fish on the surface, but, before long they got through the learning curve and were throwing timely, accurate casts to breaking fish without too much assistance from me. We caught fish steadily right up until 9:00a. At first the fish were a mix of whites and blacks, transitioning to all black bass by the time the bite was over. We brought 29 fish to net before things settled down.

After getting the boat squared away and taking a little snack break we rigged up for downrigging. We downrigged in four areas including Area 217, 463, 056, and from 458 to 465. At Area 217 we found an immense amount of bait hugging bottom with gamefish mixed in and over top of the bait. We did moderately well here putting 6 more fish in the boat, but I think there was so much bait that our Pet Spoons were not as attractive as they might otherwise be when food is more scarce.

At Area 463 we found some fish and no bait, and put only a largemouth and a drum in the boat before continuing on. These fish were at 26-31 feet.

At Area 056 we found a mix of white bass and largemouth suspended at 26-28 feet. We boated 5 fish in this area, then gave a try lift-dropping a slab to no avail.

We then headed for our final stop of the trip between Areas 458 and 465. This area is more steeply sloped than the rest of the areas, and produced the best of all of them when it came to downrigging. We boated 12 fish here in about 90 minutes finding mainly white bass with a sprinkling of largemouth, all suspended at 27-30′ with a little bait, most of which was tight to the bottom. We used two sizes of Pet Spoons to work these fish. At one point in time, Adam and I were adjusting the setback distance on the lines and had them just about equal. After a few minutes the portside rigger showed a bite. As Adam took the rod and brought the fish in, we found it had attacked and was hooked on BOTH trolled spoons! I’ve never had that happen before — kinda cool. Now that little incident came on the heels of a slightly embarrassing one … we had ‘riggers down, it was getting late in the day for the morning bite to last much longer, and we’d gone for quite a while without a bite. I kept a sharp eye on sonar and could see fish that should be biting but didn’t. Thinking we’d done all were were going to, I had the guys pop the riggers up intending to call it a day about 1:00pm. Wouldn’t you know it — both ‘riggers had a fish on the just didn’t transmit to the rod tip. So the game was back on for another half hour or so, but Ronnie wouldn’t let me live that one down — until I informed him that to continue revisiting the issue could possibly be ground to place his name on the Texas State Guides’ Black List, thus making it difficult for him to book future trips in the Lone Star state. He was very friendly from that point on. Of course this was all in jest …

By about 1:30p the bite was getting soft, Travis was getting sunburned, and it felt like someone turned on a big hairdryer so we called it a day and headed back to the dock.


TALLY = 54 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








Leave a Reply