Today I fished a half-day morning trip on Stillhouse Hollow Reservoir targeting white bass with Mr. Steve Stewart, his son-in-law, Brian Massey, and Brian’s oldest son, Owen, who is not quite 7 years old.
L to R: 7-year old Owen Massey, Brian Massey, and Steve Stewart found cooperative largemouth on topwater…
…and found cooperative white bass on bottom.
Steve owns his own small business focused on mapping software, Brian works for Scott & White in Round Rock, and Owen is getting geared up for 1st Grade.
This time of year I typically choose Stillhouse anytime a child is involved with the trip as it fishes more consistently for me than does Lake Belton.
Due to the storms that passed over us and west of us last night, the evening feed was interrupted by thunder, lightning, rain, and otherwise turbulent weather, so, I anticipated this morning’s fishing would be solid, and it was.
We experienced a low-light bite from sunrise and until 8:05a as scattered, small schools of white bass began to coalesce and feed on the abundant schools of young of the shad. As the sun brightened, no fish pushed bait up shallow for us to enjoy a vertical jigging bite on, so we moved on.
At our second stop of the morning we found the most active largemouth bass topwater feed going on that I’ve witnessed in over 2 weeks. This action lasted for right at 1 hour. The largemouth on top betrayed many more largemouth and white bass beneath, and these are what we focused on. We used slabs fished vertically when sonar lit up indicating fish beneath the boat; we used blade baits fished horizontally when the fish slacked off under the boat, and, when the action got intense enough and close enough on the surface, we threw Heddon Spook Jr.’s and caught them that way. Little Owen actually landed the largest fish of the trip, an unusually large (for topwater fishing) 3 pound largemouth. As the winds went from 10-12mph up to 13-15mph, the surface got really rough and the topwater action stopped.
We went on to our third and final stop of the day and were fortunate enough to find more topwater feeding fish pointing the way to active fish below, this time in a semi-protected area not roughed up by the wind too badly. We fished vertically with slabs for heavily schooled, bottom-oriented white bass for about a 35 minutes span, then, as this action began to wane for good, we “mopped up” with the downriggers for the few still-active fish amongst a growingly inactive population of fish.
For our efforts today we put 58 fish in the boat including 1 freshwater drum, 5 largemouth bass, and 52 white bass up to 13.75″ long.
TALLY = 58 FISH
CLICK TO RETURN TO FISHING GUIDE’S HOME PAGE
CLICK TO RETURN TO FISHING GUIDE’S FACEBOOK PAGE
TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:
Start Time: 7:00am
End Time: 11:00am
Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 77F
Water Surface Temp: 83.3F
Wind Speed & Direction: SSW10-15
Sky Conditions: Fair with 40% white-grey moderate density clouds
Other: GT=35
AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:
**Area 1438 thru 465 downrigging
**Between Areas 859 and 1134 smoking, blades, and topwater
**Area 1226 gave up last fish of the trip, first on a smoking presentation, then downrigging from there to Area 668.
Bob Maindelle
Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service
254.368.7411 (call or text)
Salado, TX
