Stillhouse Fishing Guide Report – 06 July 2009 – 34 Fish






Fished a half-day morning trip on Stillhouse today with a grand-dad, Don C. of Temple, his son-in-law, Scott, and Scott’s boys, Spencer (14) and Austin (12) of Carrollton, TX. We had a delayed start this morning on account of weather – lightning and rain on a a NE breeze – and so didn’t hit the water until 8:00am, but made up for lost time soon thereafter.



This is a really cool sonar shot. This shows 2 downrigger balls working at the same depth. As the balls pass over bottom-oriented fish, those fish (13 of them to be exact) swim upward to check out the ball and swim along with it for a few feet.


Grandpa Don and Spencer


Scott and youngest son, Austin


Start Time: 8:00a (rain delay)

End Time: 11:30a

Air Temp: 72F at trip’s start.

Water Surface Temp: ~85F

Wind: Winds were from the NNE at 8-9 from pre-sunrise through around 7:15am with lightning and rain. By 7:15 the winds began to calm, the rain lessened, and the lightning ceased.

Skies: Skies were heavy grey the entire trip.

As we waited for the rain to pass, I parked so as to be able to observe the lake’s surface. During the stretch from 6:30a until 8:00a, I didn’t see a single fish break water. As the wind died to calm, we launched out at 8:00a, and, as I was heading out to search for fish, began to see fish beginning to break the surface here and there. We headed to Area 471 and, due to a lack of aggressive surface activity and the fact that baitfish were beginning to band together at mid-depth, decided to go with a downrigging approach right off the bat.

As it turned out we were right at the lead edge of a feeding ramp up that went strong until around 10:45 and then began to taper off. During this entire time we fish twin downriggers with twin Pets tied on and fished at 22-26′. The boys did real well working together to keep our lures in the water by quickly re-rigging after a fish was brought in. We had multiple instances where we took doubles. By the end of the feed, we’d boated 30 white bass up to 15 1/16 inches, as well a 2 largemouth and a drum. All of these fish came between Area 471 and Area 476.

As the fish activity was starting to weaken, I graphed a solid school of white orienting to bottom in 22′. I buoyed them hoping to put the boys onto some fish they could cast to. I did a demo cast to show them how to work the blade bait back to the boat in a lift-drop fashion and hooked a solid white immediately. I then coached the boys to try to duplicat the success, but the fish moved off by the time the boys got their casts landing in the right spot. We never did come up with any more fish from that area.

By now it was about 11:30a and the fellows needed to hit the road on this last day of their trip to grandpa’s, so we took some photos, released our catch and headed back to the dock with 34 fish caught for the effort today.





TALLY = 34 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