In the wake of some mild thunderstorms and about 1/10th of an inch of rainfall overnight, we awoke to a clear, cool, bright morning. I welcomed Ken C., his wife, Kris, Kris’ sister, Angie, and Angie’s son, sixteen year old Andrew, aboard for some white bass fishing on Stillhouse.
L to R — Ken, Kris, Andrew, and Angie with the “best of the bunch” from our catch of white bass today.
Kris boated this nice 2 pounder from deep water on a slab.
Ken and Kris have fished with me once before in the summer months when downrigging was in vogue. Today, early flatline trolling followed by deepwater jigging was the name of the game. Angie and Andrew were down on Spring Break from the Kansas City, KS, area. I think we were all hoping for some warmer weather than we got this morning, so we took the lemons and made some lemonade.
As we got started, we flatline trolled with crankbaits in 12-16 feet of water near Area 116. We scored with 9 fish landed out of 12 fish hooked over the first hour or so. When that shallow bite died, we headed deep looking for congregated fish to jig for.
We encountered deep, congregated fish in two distinct areas: Area 1017/1172 and Area 638/639. At both locations the fish were in ~38 feet, tightly bunched and fed with only moderate aggressiveness. Technique is incredibly important when fish get tight-lipped and with the wind, boat movement and all 4 guests very new to this tactic, technique was difficult to maintain, but we did it.
For our efforts we managed to boat a grand total of 54 fish, including the four shown in the photo above, all of which beat the 13.5″ mark. 52 of these fish were white bass and the remaining 2 were largemouth bass. We got no assistance today from the birds; all the deepwater fish were found “the hard way” via sonar search.
TALLY = 54 fish, all caught and released
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TODAY’S CONDITIONS:
Start Time: 7:30a
End Time: 1:00p
Air Temp: 52F at trip’s start
Water Surface Temp: ~63F
Wind: Winds were NNE8 building to NE14
Skies: Skies were clear and bluebird.