One Tough Cookie!! — 51 Fish — Stillhouse Fishing Guide Report — 01 Aug. 2011






I fished this morning with Mr. Ryon D. of Salado, and his children, Logan and Brooke.

Brooke and proud papa Ryon smile behind her 15 3/8 inch white bass which qualified her for a Texas Parks and Wildlife “Big Fish” award


Logan matched his big sister fish for fish right to the very end of the trip.

I knew right off the bat that Brooke was my kind of fisherman. Last night, her horse, Roanie, ran her right into a barrel as she did her best at the rodeo. That cost her 3 stitches (right above a previous injury that took 6 stitches) and a very stiff leg this morning, but, she hopped out of her daddy’s truck with a big smile on her face and a big cowboy hat on her head and let me know she was excited to go fishing — during which time she worked spinning gear, baitcasting gear, downrigging gear, and lip-handled over 2 dozen fish by herself, including a magnum white bass measuring 15 3/8 inches. Did I mention she’s a 4th grader???

Little Logan did well for about 2 hours’ time and then faded on us a little, but, that’s what 5 year olds do, even on the best of fishing days. He definitely got the hang of “poppin’ ’em loose” when fish hit the downriggers!

Well, suffice it to say we all had a good time on the water this morning. The impacts of Tropical Storm Don were very minimal on Saturday, essentially just turning the morning sky red and the winds easterly for a few hours. Today, we’re back to high temperatures, clear, dry skies, and high pressure dominating the weather.

We started off with slabbing lessons just in case we hit into bottom-oriented and schooled white bass, and then went downrigging. We nailed 17 white bass and 1 largemouth by 8:05am between Areas 040 and 854, then went in search of bottom-hugging white bass holding beneath surface-feeding largemouth bass. The action was tentative as the S wind was in the process of shifting W, but was nearly slack for the time being.

To wait out the wind, we headed to Area 231 and fished with poles baited with maggots and tore up the sunfish (all bluegills today) on slipfloat rigs, boating 16 of the little rascals by 9:30, thus taking our tally up to 34 fish.

Once the wind picked up from the WNW, we headed back out to open water and searched. We found fish (largemouth up high in the water column and white bass down low) at a section of water bounded by Areas 860, 857, 658, and 858. We polished off the day here by 10:45 by boating an additional 17 fish here (16 white bass and 1 largemouth) using mainly slabs, with a bit of downrigging thrown in for good measure.


TALLY = 51 FISH, all caught and released (except to “pet” sunfish that went home in their very own Gatorade bottles destined for the home aquarium).

TODAY’S CONDITIONS:

Start Time: 6:30a

End Time: 10:45a

Air Temp: 78F at trip’s start.

Water Surface Temp: ~86.1F

Wind: Winds were SSW5 at trips start, going nearly slack 8:00 to 9:00, then picking up WNW thereafter.

Skies: Skies were ~10% cumulus clouds on a blue sky.








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