Are You Teachable? — 129 Fish, Stillhouse Fishing Guide Report, 25 June 2013






This morning I fished with retired naval flight surgeon Ray J. of Harker Heights. Ray and his wife, Linda, put him through medical school around 1959.



Ray was, above all else, teachable — a rare trait in men, generally speaking — and it paid off handsomely for him today.

Fishing was just about as easy as it gets this morning. I’ve been on several populations of fish in several areas on Stillhouse for over 3 weeks now both morning and evening and their movements, given the stable weather, have become predictable. So, we were essentially sitting on top of the fish this morning waiting for them to begin their morning feed. The fireworks got started with some light topwater action which betrayed a strong feed immediately below the waves.

We fished Area 1227 for 3 hours straight and boated 86 fish there by “smoking” TNT180 slabs for schooled white bass that were heavily congregated on bottom in ~32 feet of water. We landed a roughly 10 to 1 ratio of white bass to largemouth bass. The majority of the white bass were 3 year old class fish around 12.75 to 13.5 inches, and the majority of the largemouth bass were just shy of 14 inches.

I’ve fished with a lot of older men and, honestly, most you can’t tell much to, but, to his credit, Ray actually listened and followed my advice about being careful to observe the nuances I was pointing out about rod position, retrieve speed, line management, and so on. Over the course of the trip this translated into significantly more strikes converted to landed fish than would have been the case if he’d just fished “his way”.

After Area 1227 played out, we made a move to Area 041 and put another 37 fish in the boat, thus easily surpassing the century mark once again this month (for the fifth time). These fish were a bit more finicky and were in 35-40 feet of water. We once again experienced a 10 to 1 ratio on white bass to largemouth at this location. As we fished here, the winds began to ramp up rapidly up to 17-18 mph with stronger gusts. I thought it prudent to spend our last 30 minutes or so in more sheltered conditions.

We moved over to Area 1135-458 and rounded out the trip by downrigging in the swells, boating a final 7 fish, including 2 sets of white bass doubles taken on a tandem Pet Spoon rig.

When “search-time” is minimized, “catch-time” is maximized — and that’s what we had working for us today, despite the all-night appearance of the full moon last night.

Our tally was 129 fish including 1 drum, and a mix of 128 white bass and largemouth in a ratio of about 10:1.


TALLY = 129 FISH, all caught and released

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS:

Start Time: 6:15a

End Time: 10:15a

Air Temp: 78F at trip’s start.

Water Surface Temp: 83.8F

Wind: Winds were S7-8 at sunrise and tapered slowly up to S18, gusting over 20 by trip’s end.

Skies: Skies were greyed over with some low, thin clouds in the east until ~30 minutes after sunrise, then the skies cleared to fair with 10% cloud cover.








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