To Your Battle Stations!! White Bass at 6 O’Clock!! 66 Fish, Stilhouse Fishing Report, 13 Aug. 2012






This morning I welcomed long-time clients David, Jack, and Jay B. of Temple, TX, aboard, accompanied by their Uncle Chip from Bartlett, TX.


From L to R: Uncle Chip, Jay, David, and Jack with our 4 best white bass, all at or over 14″.


This is the family’s 4th year fishing with me and I always enjoy getting David’s call (always well in advance) letting me know he and the boys are headed my way! Each year the boys’ interest and skills increase.


As the days slowly get shorter moving towards the fall, the white bass slowly coalesce into larger and larger schools. Before we began the pursuit of fish today we practiced what to do if, as we were downrigging, we encountered a large school of white bass. This “drill” really paid off as it allowed us all to know just what our role was on the boat as we worked together to quickly get our lures down to the fish and work them effectively before the fast-moving schools of fish move off. This “battle drill” paid big dividends today as we encountered 3 scenarios while downrigging where this tactic paid off. Instead of going through the learning curve and losing out on the potential to catch fish, we practiced first and scored on the schools we had worked hard to find.

We began our hunt for fish in the vicinity of Area 1112/658 finding suspended white bass in schools of up to 20 fish holding around 23-27 feet in water ranging from 24-32 feet deep. We worked two downriggers with two tandem rigs, each outfitted with modified Pet Spoons matching the size of the forage now most attractive to the white bass. With two men and two boys on board, and great teamwork going on between all four of them, there was scarcely a time when we didn’t have our rods in the water and working for fish. We boated 24 fish in the first 90 minutes of the day in this area after which things slowly began to taper off here, indicating it was time for a move.

As we transitioned to Area 1124 and were slowing down to begin searching this new area with sonar, I spotted a tightly congregated school of white bass holding tightly to the bottom in 27 feet of water. I put the boat in a hover over top of these fish and we got 5 slab spoons (TNT 180’s in 3/4 oz. chrome/white) down and working among them. The first fish — the ice breaker — is always the toughest nut to crack. After that first one is reeled in, the rest of these school turns on, at least for a while, and subsequent fish from the same school are then easier to fool. We boated 11 fish in just minutes here on this “postage stamp”-sized area before things cooled off once again indicating it was once again time to work the downriggers over Area 1123/1122.

And so it was — we downrigged to find fish and worked slabs vertically if and when bottom-oriented concentrations were found. We connected at Areas 1112 and again at Area 197/1102.

By 10:45 things we on the downhill slide. The fish were getting tight-lipped, the wind was calming and the heat was building. We had to do a lot of looking to find any fish at all and those we found were more likely to ignore our offerings than to go for them. By 11:45 it was all over. We ended our day with 66 fish boated and a few more lost. We put 2 drum, 5 largemouth bass, and 59 white bass in the boat today. Of the white bass, only 4 were “throwbacks” at less than 10″; the rest were upwards of 12″, with our best 5 fish all exceeding 14″.


TALLY = 66 FISH, all caught and released

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS:

Start Time: 6:45a

End Time: 12:05p

Air Temp: 83F at trip’s start.

Water Surface Temp: 87F

Wind: SSW9 at sunrise and tapering to near calm.

Skies: Skies were 50% cloudy at trip’s start, clearing to 20% by trip’s end.








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