Downrig or Else!! 25 Fish, 27 June 2012, Stillhouse Fishing Guide Report






This morning I fished with Dale and Edie (that’s a gal’s name, pronounced ee-dee) from around Round Rock, Texas.


Dale and Edie on a “fishing date”!!


Dale and Edie weren’t trophy hunting, nor insistent on a particular species or technique. Rather, they just wanted to catch some fish and enjoy being outdoors and with one another while doing it.

Our weather of late has dealt us a tough hand with very hot, bright, windless days (going on 6 in a row now) squelching any topwater action, and making the fishing much more difficult than we’d normally have with normal wind speeds and directions.

Today’s bottomline: if you weren’t downrigging, you weren’t catching fish on Stillhouse, at least not in any consistent quantities.

We discovered early on that the “band of life” around the thermocline was concentrated at around 25-27 feet today. We enjoyed success at just two of several areas we tried, and nearly all success came on a pair of tandem rigs rigged up with modified twin Pet Spoons.

We experienced two distinct “spikes” of activity — one at Area 197/909 which stretched from 7:05 to 8:40, and another lesser spike that occurred at Area 1103 from 10:45 to 11:30. Outside of this it was awful quiet.

During the first spike we began to catch fish on the downriggers including hooking two sets of doubles (two fish on one rig at the same time) — a pair of largemouth (both of which then got away on the jump) and a pair white bass. The downrigging stayed consistent and we even smoked a few from near bottom using TNT180 slabs. When the smoking action died, we went back to downrigging and rode that horse until it died around 8:40.

Like many people I take out, Dale has his own boat but experiences a lack of consistency when fishing Stillhouse, typically only boating a few fish, if that. So, as we went through the day, I was careful to point out things that would help him be more successful on his own wherever he fished, but especially on Stillhouse.

For our efforts on this tough day we still put 25 fish in the boat including 1 drum, 1 largemouth, and 23 white bass, all of which were of legal size, with several hitting the 13.75″ mark.

TALLY = 25 FISH, all caught and released

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS:

Start Time: 6:30a

End Time: 12:10p

Air Temp: 78F at trip’s start.

Water Surface Temp: 84.7F

Wind: SE2-5 early, then light and variable.

Skies: Skies were clear and bright.








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