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After fishing a morning trip on Belton, I gauged the end time of the fishes’ morning feed there (around 11:15) and decided I’d better go with Stillhouse in the afternoon.  Although I was sure the fish on Belton would feed in the evening, I couldn’t imagine them turning on again just two hours or so after they’d fed long and hard and then quit.  I’d fished Stillhouse on Wednesday evening and again on Thanksgiving morning just to scout things out, see where the fish and the bait could be located, and to check for any helpful bird action.  The results of those scouting trips gave me confidence that we’d get on fish this afternoon.

We started out the trip by ironing out any kinks in Jim and Shena’s jigging techniques. After just a few minutes’ review, they were looking good. 

We looked for fish in 4 areas today, and were blessed to find fish in 3 of them.  Jim and Shena have fished with me so many times, they already had the essentials of jigging down, and they did well attracting and hooking a lot of fish.  I noted, however, that many of the hookups did not result in boated fish, so, we worked together to “polish” an already solid technique.  For Jim, slowing down his reeling speed when playing hooked fish was something that we noted could use some improvement, and, by trip’s end, he had definitely improved, thanks to lots of opportunities to practice.  Generally speaking, the problem of reeling a fish in too fast is that too much strain develops in the system, and the force generated by the fisherman’s gear pulling against the fish can cause a marginally buried hook to come out of the small bit of tissue it is buried in.  Slowing down the retrieve keeps this amount of force below the “critical” level.

For Shena, I noted she initially had a tendency to reeling a hooked fish up a bit too closely to the rod tip.  This resulted in a few frustrating losses of fish right at or near the water’s surface, or as the fish was being swung into the boat from out of the water.  This never typically was a problem back when everyone used monofilament.  Now, in spooling up with braided lines (I use Sufix 832) there is much less stretch and therefore much less shock absorbing capacity.  When a fish gets near the surface or out of the water and shakes its head, a hook is easily torn out or dislodged by the back and forth “flopping” of the heavy slab,  To combat this, I urge all of my guests to leave at least 3 feet of line from the tip of the rod to the snout of the fish.  As she worked on this, her hook-to-land ratio definitely went up.