Fishing with the Colonel — 100 Fish at Stillhouse — 15 Dec. 2010






Well, it doesn’t get anymore straightforward than this … I saw a pre-frontal weather pattern developing and knew the fishing would be great. I contacted 3 people who’d expressed interest in fishing in this winter season, and Colonel Ken C. of Harker Heights was the only one whose schedule would allow him to cash in.

The Colonel, in typical Army fashion, worked half the day on post on this, one of his leave days, and then came directly to the dock from the office to squeeze in some fishing. Here Ken shows a pair of clean, healthy Stillhouse white bass.

We met at 2:20pm. At 2:40pm we found abundant fish in and around Area 679 at the transition between the deep flat here and the river channel. I dropped a buoy on these fish as a visual reference, and then set the i-Pilot on the Minn Kota Terrova to keep our nose into the 20-22 mph wind. That little puppy got a workout tonight and earned its keep!!

On our first drop of the slab we came up with a double, and the fish never stopped coming in until around 5:10pm, just 10 minutes before sunset. Although the action ebbed and flowed and we occasionally needed to bump a few yards in one direction or another either along the break or up on the flat, we never lost contact with the fish.

By 4:30pm we’d boated 85 fish and at that time, with the bite beginning to get soft, we made it our goal to boat 100 fish tonight and we did exactly that including 93 white bass up to 14.5 inches in length, 4 largemouth bass, 2 drum, and 1 crappie. Every single fish came on either a 3/8 or 3/4 oz. TNT 180 slab.

At 5:10pm, with our 100th fish boated, we quickly headed to the vicinity of Area 033 to check on a sunset bite there, but none was to be had so we wrapped it up.

TALLY = 100 fish, all caught and released

TODAY’S CONDITIONS:

Start Time: 2:20p

End Time: 5:25p

Air Temp: 69F at trip’s start.

Water Surface Temp: ~56.7F

Wind: Winds were SSW20, tapering off to SSW13.

Skies: Skies were fair.