I fished a morning trip on Stillhouse today with newlyweds Alec and Grace, both of Virginia. Alec has been assigned to Ft. Hood as his first duty station after graduating from VMI and serves with the 1st Cavalry Division. Grace recently joined him here and works as an Army contractor on the post, as well. This trip was a surprise birthday present for Alec. The couple has tried their luck fishing here in Central Texas on a number of occasions, but got “skunked” each time. Grace’s mandate to me was “We HAVE to catch ONE fish!”.

Newlyweds Alec and Grace with a birthday surprise!

We met dockside at 7:15am and by 7:30am both Alec and Grace had caught white bass on the downriggers over Area 644. We went on to catch two more white bass there as well before the skies brightened and the wind came up sufficient to lead me to take us in search of congregated fish.

Unfortunately, the wind just puffed and didn’t really kick in steadily until around 9:30. Until that time the fishing action was soft — we saw 1 short largemouth boated at Area 145, and 5 fish came over the side at Area 252.

After that brief flurry of activity, we headed to Area 079 and quickly picked up 7 white bass by “smoking” them with slabs. This action died very suddenly, as sometimes happens when the commotion caused by hooking and reeling in fish stirs up larger predator fish like very large bass or longnose gar. Bottom line: the fishing here ended suddenly and it was time to move on.

We unsuccessfully tried a number of locations without finding much in the way of gamefish or bait.

We made a final stop at Area 679 and things turned on here really well. The fish rose up off the bottom to meet our slabs on our first drop. In all we boated 17 fish here including 16 white bass and a single 1.25 pound largemouth. By 12:15p the bite was over for good and we headed back in having soundly met Miss Grace’s mandate!

TALLY = 34 FISH, all caught and released