Bass, Bait, and Bill — 60 Fish, Stillhouse Hollow, 16 Dec. 2014

This morning I fished with Bill Mielke of Kempner, TX, as we sought after white bass using artificial lures on Stillhouse Hollow Lake located between Austin and Waco.

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Bill came up with a bit of a surprise — a channel catfish on a jigging spoon from out of 24 feet of water.  The bait was abundant in this area, thus a lot of gamefish were here, too.  In one area the size of our boat, we pulled multiple white bass, freshwater drum, largemouth bass, and this catfish, all in about 30 minutes’ time.

Bill Mielke Trip Dec 2014

Bill turned the camera on me today after I hooked this nice 5.00 pound largemouth co-located with schooled white bass near a tad of submerged timber.

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A few of the nice white bass we took from a large, mobile school of hundreds of fish we found at late morning.

Bill is both former military and a former cop (Atlanta, Georgia area) who is now married and raising two kids while going back to college on the G.I. Bill.

Bill is originally from “up north” in Minnesota, but, despite having lived in the land of 10,000 lakes, he hadn’t been fishing since he was 16, so, he we long overdue.

We had pretty brisk conditions today in the wake of yesterday’s cold front passage, but the north winds had not yet begin to slack off, so, I knew we still had a very good chance of putting together a decent catch.  We got going right at sunrise (which could actually be seen today after a long run of grey, cloudy days) and got right into some bird action which would come and go for the better part of nearly 3 hours before fading out around 10:15am.

Fishing was pretty straightforward today — we “read” the birds, located the fish the birds were working over top of via sonar, then worked a slab vertically for as long as the fish were willing to cooperate.  We found average action at the first 3 locations we hit, then excellent action from 9:00 to 10:00am at the last location we fished.

At this last location, Area 1503, fish were not just in the last 2-3 feet of the water column, they were in the lower 1/2 of the water column in ~41 feet of water and there were a lot of fish — several hundred — and they were on the move.  I have never encountered fish in this particular location before, and I suspect they were just migrating through on their general upstream movement towards the Lampasas River for a possible spawning run in the spring (if we have rain and flow by then).  Anyway, we used a very slow version of the smoking technique to interest these fish and then vertically jigged near bottom after they got sluggish.

When the birds pulled off of these fish, the bite was just about done.  We ended up with exactly 60 fish today including, 1 channel cat, 1 largemouth, 2 freshwater drum, and 56 white bass.

TALLY = 60 FISH, all caught and released

 

GUIDE’S WEBSITE: http://holdingthelineguideservice.com/

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 7:20a

End Time: 11:15a

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 42F

Water Surface Temp: 57.0F

Wind Speed & Direction: NNW11-12

Sky Conditions: Post frontal and clear

Other: GT=0

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 1310/1501 vertical jigging in ~21-24 feet of water

**Area 1511 vertical jigging in 24-26 feet of water

**Area 470/988 vertical jigging in 24-25 feet of water

**Area 1503

Bob Maindelle
Stillhouse Hollow Fishing Guide
Belton Lake Fishing Guide
Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service
254.368.7411 (call or text)

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