This morning found me back on Stillhouse with father and son team Jeff and Spencer D. of Killeen for some post-frontal white bass action.

Spencer (L) and Jeff (R) with 4 of the 53 fish we boated this morning. The fish were hungry after having their routines interrupted by an early wet cold front these past four days.

At one point in our trip Jeff boated a double and Spencer brought in a single within seconds of one another. The 3 fish were all of different year classes — I’d estimate them as 2012, 2011, and 2010 year class fish.

Spencer had only been fishing once before, but that was enough to give him “the itch” to want to go again. He has the good fortune of being home-schooled and his dad has the good fortune of having an other-than-Saturday/Sunday weekend in his line of work, so, this Monday offered a great opportunity to cash in on some fishing. The lake was deserted and the fishing was great.

Last Thursday a cold front slowly made its way into Central Texas turning the winds northerly and the skies wet for a few days. The fish get put off of their feed at such times, so, they were ready to eat again this morning and get back to a routine.

Summer patterns and tactics are still firmly in place — we downrigged to find ’em and fished vertically and horizontally to take advantage of what we found for as long as it would last.

We had consistent results from the very beginning of our trip to the very end. At first, downrigging for scattered suspended fish holding just above the thermocline was the rule. We enjoyed our best success at Area 1112/041 working modified Pet Spoons on tandem rigs. Fishing in this fashion we boated 19 fish by 8:40, including 1 largemouth bass, 2 drum, and 16 white bass and including 5 sets of doubles (2 fish caught on the tandem rig at the same time).

Around 8:40 things got quiet here and we had to go looking once again. We contacted fish again around 9:15a and put 5 more white bass in the boat over the next 30 minutes using downriggers over top of Area 1133. As Jeff was reeling in yet another double, the sonar absolutely lit up with fish as we glided to a stop when I took the outboard out of gear. I set the trolling motor to hover us over this spot and we got the ‘rigging gear in as quickly as we could and got to work with our slabs (TNT180’s in 3/4 oz. and with a white/silver color scheme). We used a smoking tactic to coax these shad-chasing predators into taking our baits and they cooperated nicely. In our final 35 minutes we brought in a total of 29 fish (26 white bass, 1 drum, and 1 largemouth) as the school beneath us stayed active. Then, like someone flipped a switch, it was over. The sonar still showed fish, but they were done feeding. With an appointment to get to in Killeen, we called it a day at the 3+ hour mark and enjoyed a cool, comfortable ride back to the dock.

TALLY = 53 FISH, all caught and released.

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS:

Start Time: 7:00a

End Time: 10:15a

Air Temp: 68F at trip’s start.

Water Surface Temp: 78.6F

Wind: WNW5-8.

Skies: Skies were 80% cloudy.

This blog entry was authored by Bob Maindelle, owner of Holding the Line Guide Service, Belton Lake Fishing Guide and Stillhouse Hollow Fishing Guide.

This evening I headed out on Belton Lake with Dan S. of Washington state hoping for some topwater action now that the weather has straightened out following our recent cold front.

Dan is a combat engineer serving in his first enlistment in the U.S. Army at Ft. Hood. The year ahead will be an eventful one for him — he’s set to marry next month and will deploy to Afghanistan shortly thereafter.

As a gift, his parents got him a fishing gift certificate earlier in the summer and, with his training schedule being as it has, he only now has had the opportunity to redeem it.

We were ready to go last Thursday when the cold front arrived earlier than either me or the weatherman anticipated and so we postponed until the return of a favorable wind so that we could hedge our bet on experiencing some topwater action — something Dan has never seen in his fishing experience on the Yakima River back home.

As we got going we searched over Area 651 with sonar and, at around 37 feet, found a massive school of small blue catfish going 12-16″. By massive, I mean there were literally several hundred fish packed into a very small area. We downrigged (yes, intentionally used a moving, artificial lure very successfully for a catfish species) for 5 catfish and a small white bass and intended to stay longer, but a nice cloud bank to the SW brought an early dimming of the sun’s direct rays and so we headed elsewhere thinking we could find some better sized white bass and perhaps some hybrid in so doing.

We headed over to Area 1129 and, after a bit of searching to the E and W of here, found fish right on top of this area in 24-27 feet of water. Funny thing, although we picked off one fish after another with a horizontal presentation using the downriggers and although we were able to stop the boat and set up atop several dense schools of fish, these fish nearly flat refused to take a presentation with a vertical component to it. We cast bladebaits and slabs and worked them vertically and diagonally to no avail. Every time (and this repeated 4-5 times in a 40 minute span) we went back to downrigging and ran those baits perfectly horizontally, the fish responded and we hooked up. Weird, huh!?!

We quickly put 9 more fish in the boat before sunset, then, at and after sunset the fish made a movement shallow and we were able to follow them and only then began to take fish on the cast once they were in less than 12 feet of water. Eventually, near dark (well after sunset) the fish actually began to break the surface and feed on topwater, but it was light and short-lived, but, enough for Dan who had never seen such a thing to witness it and pull a few fish from off the top on the Cork Rig I designed just for this kind of fishing.

We wrapped up our trip around 8:30 with 32 fish boated including 5 blue cat, 2 short hybrid, 25 white bass, and at least 2 more hybrid that pulled off right at boatside.

Sorry I don’t have photos — we decided to catch fish instead of take pictures of them, and by the time it was all over with, it was too dark for a quality photo.

TALLY = 32 FISH, all caught and released.

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS:

Start Time: 5:30p

End Time: 8:35p

Air Temp: 77F at trip’s start.

Water Surface Temp: 78.6F

Wind: WNW5-6.

Skies: Skies were 80% cloudy.

This blog entry was authored by Bob Maindelle, owner of Holding the Line Guide Service, Belton Lake Fishing Guide and Stillhouse Hollow Fishing Guide.