With a morning and afternoon trip lined up for Saturday I wanted to get out on the water this afternoon as it has been a while since I’ve fished Stillhouse other than in the morning. I wanted to get a feel for where the fish were locating at this time of day, when they turned on, when they turned off and how enthusiastic they were (or weren’t!) about hitting.

This screen shot shows excited fish lifted and staying well off the bottom and very active after just a few minutes of jigging over them.

My objective was not to catch a bunch of fish, rather, it was to locate areas fish were using so that I’d have options I was confident in with customers on board on Saturday.

I got out on the water at 1:45p and found my first fish at 2:20pm. From that point I tried to boat 10 fish at each area where I’d located fish, then leave them biting and go look for additional active fish while the “window of activity” was still open.

I found fish in the following Areas:

Area 546 – 10 fish

Area 103 – 10 fish (there were a LOT more fish here)

Area 699 – 10 fish

Area 700 – 10 fish

Area 539 – 11 fish (first fish was a flathead, so I kept fishing to see if white bass were here and found they were

Area 675/530 – 10 fish

At each area, fish were up off the bottom and obvious on sonar. Once I began to jig for them, they became very aggressive and were able to be caught with a smoking retrieve and often remained up off bottom as the above sonar screen shot shows.

This trip turned out to be a good confidence booster. With Saturday afternoon’s forecast showing an approaching front’s north wind coming in around early afternoon and the uncertainty of whether this will hurt or help fishing, I wanted to at least know where the fish will be so I know to hang tough over productive areas if they get tightlipped.

TALLY = 61 FISH, all caught and released

TODAY’S CONDITIONS:

Start Time: 1:45p

End Time: 5:20p

Air Temp: 72F at trip’s start..

Water Surface Temp: ~62.1F

Wind: Winds were SSW at 9.

Skies: Skies were fair.