This morning I fished with Aaron Chevalier and his brother-in-law, Zach Bias. Aaron was accompanied by his girlfriend, Jasmine Gallaher, and Zach was accompanied by his girlfriend, Kait Osborne. Aaron and Kait are originally from central Texas, Zach got here as soon as he could from the Midland area in west Texas, and Jasmine is from the Pacific Northwest.
L to R: Zach Bias, Kait Osborne, Jasmine Gallaher, and Aaron Chevalier with 4 of the 101 fish taken today via a combination of downrigging and vertical jigging.
Brothers-in-law Zach and Aaron taking some time away from their studies.
Aaron is a biology graduate student at the University of Washington working in the field of protein engineering (think flu vaccines and the like), Jasmine is a Registered Nurse, Zach is a full-time student and “manny” (think man-nanny), and Kait is working on her EMT credentials. Aaron coordinated the trip and did a great job of selling the girls on the idea that a cold, rainy fishing trip would be “fun”. That feat was made so much more difficult by the fact that his own girlfriend was not a morning person. But, somehow, the man succeeded, and, at 6:30am Aaron and crew came marching down the ramp ready to slay ’em.
We had a surprisingly successful trip today given the north wind conditions and the instability in our weather of late. Jasmine said a number of times how ironic it was to come to Texas for a visit in July only to leave record Seattle heat behind and encounter abundant rain, grey skies, and an ambient temperature around 71F within an hour of noon. It’s like she never left Seattle.
At exactly 7:05am we encountered our first school of white bass, tightly congregated and suspended at 26-32 feet over a deeper bottom. We ran twin downriggers today, each equipped with a 3-arm umbrella rig outfitted with Pet Spoons selected to match the size of forage the fish are now feeding on. From that time until we had boated our 99th fish around 10:50am, we never went more than a few minutes without catching a fish, and, many times over, boated doubles and triples.
Our success was enhanced by the fact that Aaron was already familiar with how downriggers worked from his experience in trolling for various species of salmon on Puget Sound, and Zach learned quickly how to rig up, so, we kept baits in the water continuously, rarely having a break in the trolling regimen.
On 3 separate occasions we halted our downrigging and, using i-Pilot technology, hovered over especially thick schools of fish to vertically jig for those fish using white, 3/4 oz. TNT slabs, also selected to imitate the forage size. This allowed multiple fish to be taken in a very short period of time and piled onto the fish count.
As the fish were winding down, we wanted to break the 100-fish-day mark. Zach had mentioned at the beginning of the trip about wanting to introduce his nephew to fishing. I told him we’d save some time at trip’s end to do a little “demo” on what I’d suggest for this occasion. As we pulled back up to the boat ramp at the close of the trip with 99 fish boated, I whipped out the old sunfish slip-float rig and showed Zach how to use it. He was like a kid in a candy store after seeing how effective this technique was and seeing a way to simply offer his nephew a good first exposure to angling. Zach brought in fish numbers 100 and 101 to seal the deal!
We boated exactly 101 fish today including 98 white bass, 1 freshwater drum, and 2 sunfish. To his credit, Aaron listened to my suggestion that we fish Stillhouse even though his preference was for Belton. Over the past week, even with some experienced anglers on board, the fishery has just been crawling along on Belton whereas Stillhouse’s fishery has really taken off. He didn’t try to “guide the guide” and was handsomely rewarded for that good call.
TALLY = 101 FISH
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TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:
Start Time: 6:30am
End Time: 11:05am
Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 71F
Water Surface Temp: 83.4F
Wind Speed & Direction: N7-9
Sky Conditions: 100% heavy grey skies and spitting drizzle the entire trip
Other: GT=45
AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:
**Area 863-882 White bass on downriggers and via smoking slabs
**Area 910/912/918 White bass on downriggers and via smoking slabs
**Area 239 Sunfish
Bob Maindelle
Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service
254.368.7411 (call or text)
Salado, TX
www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com