Man what a great day! Great guests, great weather, great fishing … everything was just right today! Joining me aboard today was returning guest Chuck S. and his 5th Grade son, Matthew. Chuck also invited a buddy from work, Mike D., and Mike’s 8th Grade daughter, Heather.
Everybody caught a bunch of ’em today!! From L to R Mike, Heather, Matthew, and Chuck
Matthew stayed focused the entire trip, and it paid off for him!
Start Time: 6:35a
End Time: 11:20am
Air Temp: 49F at trip’s start.
Water Surface Temp: ~63.5F
Wind: Winds were light from the S. at trip’s start, then went calm, then came up well from the SSW at 9-10 thus spurring on a good feed.
Skies: Skies were clear with ground fog, then cleared during the calm wind, then went 100% light grey cloud cover as the SSW wind began.
We met up at 6:35am and I spent a bit of time familiarizing everyone with the spinning tackle we would be using today, as well as the two methods of working slabs that I anticipated would be appropriate given today’s conditions. We launched just before sunup and, due to lingering fog and calm winds, spent a bit of time downrigging and waiting on the conditions to get a bit more favorable.
We took about 6-7 passes with the downriggers in and around Area 543, and pulled up 4 white bass — two each for the kids so they could get accustomed to the use of the rods, keeping a good fighting angle on the rod, learning when and when not to reel, etc.
After about 35 minutes, a bit of a S. breeze began and the sun began to warm the atmosphere causing the fog to diminish. We headed to Area 078 and, upon arrival, saw some small white bass feeding in the surface film very tentatively. I wove through this area with eyes fixed on sonar and saw that the fish were scattered. I stopped us, put us in a hover, and we went to work vertical jigging. We came up with 3 fish in short order here as I moved us from fish pod to fish pod using the graph, then had everyone work over the well-spread, bottom-hugging fish we saw on sonar. The fog came and went and came again and then finally cleared. As it did, I headed us toward Area 375 (BA: 10 HG).
At Area 375 we found both bottom-hugging and suspended fish (both active) in good numbers. I had the kids on either side of me on the casting deck vertical jigging and the dads to our flanks working their slabs in a lift-drop fashion. This kept fish stirred up and biting right at the boat. We quickly put 27 white bass of all sizes in the boat. These fish were very aggressive and were also fairly prone to moving. So, over the next hour, we spot-hopped in this general vicinity as we found and lost schools of fish on sonar. We had some visual cues as small pods of smaller fish would “boil” on the top after shad, and we consistently caught fish of all sizes from these areas after we observed this and began fishing for them.
Around 9am, the wind died, and the sun burned off the fog. It got very warm and very bright very quickly, and with a slick surface (not good!). I had looked at the forecast very closely the night before and knew we should be getting more wind — I just hoped it was in time to spur the morning bite back on. We did what we could by downrigging as the fish settled down, and came up with a single fish every few minutes, primarily from suspended pods of fish holding at 15-17 feet and at 20-22 feet in a circuit from Area 375 to 314 to 103.
Around 9:45 our wind finally arrived, along with some wonderful, grey cloud cover. The wind was from just west of south and right at 8-10 mph. After the wind had worked on the water for about 20-25 minutes, we spotted some action at Area 549 (three separate pods of fish feeding on the surface over a short span of time). As I idled in, sonar lit up. There in 28-30 feet of water was a school of white bass about 12 feet thick. I quickly got a buoy down and we went to work on these fish for about 75 minutes straight. With 5 rods working, it didn’t take long to amass a sizeable catch of fish. Matt caught the big fish today, a chunky largemouth that went exactly 2 pounds; he also landed a drum — all the rest were white bass ranging from 6 1/2 to 13 1/4 inches with a fairly even distribution of year classes accounted for. Again, I observed that we’re not seeing anywhere near the by-catch of largemouth bass that we’ve seen over the past 2 years, due, I believe, to the reappearance of hydrilla (the preferred habitat of largemouth).
We ended our day at 11:20 with exactly 123 fish boated. We got back to the dock courtesy of Matthew’s boat handling skills, got offloaded, and I pointed everyone toward Johnny’s barbeque place in Salado. And so ended another great day on Stillhouse.
TALLY = 123 fish, all caught and released.