Stillhouse Hollow Fishing Guide Report – 10 Aug. 2009 – 51 Fish






Fished a half-day morning “Kids Fish, Too!” trip this morning with repeat customers Dr. David B., and his 7 and 10 year old sons, Jay and Jack.

Jack, Jay, and David with some of the largemouth taken topside during their sunrise feeding spree

From L to R: The downrigger ball (horizontal blue/red line) tracks into a thick, suspended school of white bass, and then over a bottom-hugging school of bait with white bass hovering over top of the bait and pinning the bait to bottom. This shows but a cross-section of a school of fish consisting of several hundred individuals which we fish over for about an hour.


Start Time: 6:45a

End Time: 11:00a

Air Temp: 77F at trip’s start.

Water Surface Temp: ~84.3F

Wind: Winds were SE at 5-6 at sunrise, transitioning and increasing to SSW at 14+ by trip’s end.

Skies: Fair skies all day.

We started today’s trip on the dock with some review on casting with closed face reels since the boys’ last trip back in June. The topwater schooling bass we were soon to search for are much more finicky now and are requiring smaller baits versus the Spooks and Sammys used previously. The boys looked good after a few throws, so we headed out as the sun was about to rise to chase fish.

Just minutes after sunrise the largemouth began to work in schools on the surface chasing shad in the vicinity of Area 061. They stayed active for 75 minutes, quickly tapering off around 8:15am. During this spree, the boys landed 13 largemouth of which 5 were of legal length. 2 other fish were lost on the shake at boatside.

After the largemouth sounded, we searched out deep water white bass. The first two areas we searched, Area 217 and vicinity and Area 481 and vicinity yielded little, although Area 211 held a bunch of bait.

On our third look we contacted fish and bait at Area 485. These fish were suspended, and our downrigging approach was very appropriate for taking these fish. We made pass after pass over these fish, and they bit for about an hour solid. We boated 35 fish here, mainly white bass, with a few largemouth thrown in, and including 2 sets of tandems on the Pet / Licker combo for Jack. When things really got hot, little Jay commented, “I could do this until midnight!”. By 10:45, these fish were slacking off pretty good.

I returned to the bait I’d found at Area 217 to see if gamefish had found them yet, but zeroed after ~10 minutes with lines in.

We wrapped up our trip just to the SE of Area 258. The groups of fish in here were both bottom hugging and suspended. The best action came when the downrigger balls scraped bottom on the little knob here and then came clear on the deep side. Just as the lures were about to come over the drop, the fish would strike them reliably. We took the count up over 50 and then called it a good day. The boys even got to steer the boat a little on our way back in.


TALLY = 51 FISH


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








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