Post-Freeze Scouting Trip – 10 Fish, Stillhouse, 04 Feb. 2011






With a clearing WNW wind and bright sun, the ~2 inches of snow dropped overnight last night had all but disappeared as the sun set this evening.

After 5 days of sub-freezing weather, today’s air temperature at launch time was only 34F, but the fish were beginning to feed. Note the accumulated ice buildup on the rocks behind me and the last remnants of snow.


The clearing weather of today and forecast SW winds for tomorrow made me hopeful that the fish will feed heavily tomorrow. I wanted to get on the water this evening to pin down some bait concentrations and possibly some fish locations.

I only had the last 90 minutes of the day to work with, but, that allowed me to check 4 areas with sonar. I found fish at two of these and fished both of them just to confirm what sonar revealed.

I first contacted fish at Area 186 and boated 5 white bass via sniping and left these fish still biting to go on to locate additional areas in hopes of putting together a trip for tomorrow.

I then found fish at Area 722, and again boated 5 white bass via sniping and left these fish still biting to go on to locate additional fish, but, with sunset just minutes away and the temperature quickly falling below freezing, I decided it was time to go.

I consider catching ten fish with weather like we had today a very promising sign that tomorrow’s fishing will be very good IF the SW wind that is forecast does pan out. We’ll see…

TALLY = 10 FISH, all caught and released.


Today’s Conditions:

Start Time: 4:30p

End Time: 6:15p

Starting Air Temp: 34F

Water Surface Temp: 46.0-46.6F

Wind: WNW12 slowly tapering to WNW7

Skies: Clear