Thanks for the Fishing Trip, Granny!! — 68 Fish, Stillhouse Fishing Guide Report, 11 June 2013






This morning I fished with cousins Matthew and Kelsie, chaperoned by Matthew’s mom, Kelly. This trip was a gift from the kids’ grandma.


Here Matthew and Kelsey display two of the larger white bass they landed today using a variety of tactics, from top to bottom.

Matthew has been out with me on quite a few previous occasions and is becoming quite the accomplished angler in terms of species he’s landed and techniques he’s capable of using. Now, contrast that with Kelsie who had never been fishing before. It’s easy to guess where I needed to place my attention on this particular trip.

Over the course of the trip I got to realize that Kelsie is a very compassionate, sweet, 9 year old all-American girl. She has 3 horses, 4 rabbits, 2 dogs, and is working on showing rabbits through 4-H participation right now. She was quite concerned about any harm that might befall the fish we were catching today. She seemed to be satisfied that as long as we were catching and releasing our fish, we would remain on the straight and narrow.

To help Kelsie along, we did some casting practice from the shore before we even stepped foot on the boat. She got the hang of casting a spinning rod very quickly. After several consecutive, flawless casts, we all loaded up and moved on out to where the fish were.

Once again this morning we were fortunate to encounter topwater action. This time, we found fish popping young of the year shad around Area 239. We used bladebaits to target these fish and boated 13 before this action died after just 20-25 minutes. I am proud to say Kelsie caught a fish on her very first cast!

Due to the fairly thick, grey cloud cover right at sunrise, the bite got off to a bit of a slow start. We had to look for fish for about 25 minutes before finding some solid action. We found more white bass feeding at and near the surface on occasion, and very actively in the 21-25 foot range in the vicinity of Area 205/484. Accordingly, we targeted these fish with downriggers when they were “down” and with topwater baits when they were “up”. We also tried a “lift-drop” tactic with bladebait when I marked bottom-oriented fish while downrigging. We worked in this area for nearly 2 hours.

When I sensed the novelty of downrigging was wearing out on Kelsie, I suggested we do a bit of shallow water sunfishing. Both kids were up for that, so, off we went to Area 1098. We found abundant bluegill and longear sunfish here in shallow water and caught fish steadily on slip-bobber rigs.

As the 10 o’clock hour approached, the sunfish were losing interest in our baits, so, I suggested we give downrigging one more try in a different area. The kids’ enthusiasm was rekindled for that technique, so, we headed to Area 832/458 and downrigged at 21-24 feet for 4 final fish, putting our grand total at 68 fish boated for the trip.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that Matthew was a huge help today in making his younger cousin successful. A number of times I nudged him to fend for himself on things (untangling knots, asking questions, taking fish off the hook, setting up the downrigging equipment, etc.) which I’d normally be helping him with so I could devote more attention to Kelsie. He rose to the occasion and wound up learning a lot thanks to the “sink or swim” approach I took on a few of these things.

Great job, kids!

TALLY = 68 FISH, all caught and released

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS:

Start Time: 6:15a

End Time: 10:45a

Air Temp: 76F at trip’s start.

Water Surface Temp: 82F

Wind: Winds were S8-10.


Bob Maindelle

Holding the Line Guide Service

254-368-7411

www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

Salado, Texas