This morning I fished with 15 year old Kayla Marquez and her 8 year old brother, Zach, on Stillhouse Hollow. This was a “SKIFF” (Soldiers’ Kids Involved in Fishing Fun) trip — the 9th one of 2013 — all sponsored by the Austin Fly Fishers.
Downrigging accounted for about half of our fish this morning, with the other half split between jigging slabs and casting bladebaits.
Zach landed our trip lunker today, this largemouth weighed in at 1 7/8 pounds.
Kayla and Zach are the children of U.S. Army Reserve Sergeant First Class (SFC) Abe Marquez and his wife, Hilary. SFC Marquez has served overseas on 4 previous deployments and is now providing security at the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan. SFC Marquez is currently assigned to the 479th Field Artillery Brigade.
Fishing was easy today, and so pleasant!! A rare mid-summer cool front pushed through over the weekend, shifting our winds to the north and dropping the overnight temps into the mid- to high-60’s and daytime highs in the high 80’s and low 90’s, nearly 15 degrees off last week’s highs. No, not exactly longjohn weather, but a far cry from what it could be in early July in Texas.
With an 8 year old on board, I went for the “instant gratification” approach by downrigging for white bass right off the bat, helping Zach connect with a multi-species “double” in the first minutes of the trip in the vicinity of Area 250/251/1230). As his downrigger went off, Zach brought in a white bass and a largemouth bass on a pair of Pet Spoons. We continued downrigging this area until the bite died, boating a total of 38 fish before we moved on, including both white bass and largemouth.
Our next success came at Area 1112. There, in about 34 feet of water, we came across a large (200-300 fish) school of white bass holding right on a breakline. I got us into a hover using the i-Pilot feature on my trolling motor, and we vertically jigged for these fish using a “smoking” tactic. We caught exactly 20 more white bass here in less than 45 minutes before the school dissipated.
Zach really liked the downrigging, and Kayla much preferred the jigging, so, I tried to do a good blend of both. After 45 minutes of jigging, no matter how productive it was, Zach was ready for some more downrigging. Also, as we first got going this morning, I showed both kids how to cast, yet, up to this point we really hadn’t done much casting as the topwater action was subdued due to the speed and direction of the wind.
We headed to Area 458 where I felt confident we could pick up a few more fish on the downriggers before calling it a day. As we closed in on the “spot on the spot”, we picked up 3 fish on the downriggers, including another double for Zach. When we hit the 28 foot mark (having started out over 40+ feet of water), the sonar just lit up. There was a thick school of white bass in here that carpeted the bottom for 15 yards and which was 3-4 feet “thick” along the bottom. I put the brakes on, hauled in the downrigging gear, hovered over these fish with the trolling motor, and proceeded to put the kids into a final 16 fish taken by casting and working bladebaits horizontally along the bottom. The potential was there for much more, but, this was both kids’ first experience casting spinning gear under “real life” conditions, so the normal errant casts, tangles, and the like reduced that potential a bit, but, the bottom line was that both kids were successful in this new thing they tried.
We ended up the trip with 77 fish today consisting entirely of white bass and largemouth bass.
The members of the Austin Fly Fishers (and other individuals) raise the funds and donate time and money to make these trips available at no charge to the families receiving them. Thank you all!! And, I’d like to say a special “Thank You” to Amanda T. at Minn Kota headquarters. She really helped us out by providing our SKIFF boat with a state of the art battery recharging system (an MK460PC) to replace the MK345 that gave up the ghost outside its warranty period. She and Joe B. over there have been good to SKIFF in a lot of ways since 2009 when we first got going. Thanks, guys!!
TALLY = 77 FISH, all caught and released
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TODAY’S CONDITIONS:
Start Time: 6:30a
End Time: 10:40a
Air Temp: 66F at trip’s start.
Water Surface Temp: 82.3F
Wind: Winds were NNE5-7 the entire trip.
Skies: Clear.
Bob Maindelle
Holding the Line Guide Service
254-368-7411
www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com
Salado, Texas