This morning, Wednesday, July 19th, I fished the 9th “SKIFF” program trip of the 2017 season on Stillhouse, welcoming aboard 12-year-old Logan Allred.
Logan Allred with one of the 100 fish we landed together today including white bass, largemouth bass, and freshwater drum. We used a variety of tactics including downrigging, vertical jigging, and sight casting.
Logan’s step-dad, Chief Warrant Officer 2 Chesworth, is a US Army Apache helicopter pilot with 15 years of military service. He’s currently away from home participating in recurring gunnery training.
It was a real joy to have Logan aboard. He is very experienced for his age and very capably handled a spinning outfit, throwing both far and accurately. He had done a good bit of fishing in Utah for several species of trout using a variety of tactics, including icefishing, which is not unlike the vertical jigging we would use for white bass on this trip. Logan’s abilities let us take advantage of “sharpshooting” for individual largemouth bass seen feeding on the surface which is something I often am not able to do even with adult clients.
We downrigged only long enough to catch one white bass on each of the downriggers before the sonar began lighting up with fish that were suspended about a third of the way up off bottom. I put the boat in a hover using the Spot Lock function on the Ulterra, and we went to work using a smoking tactic with the “old reliable” white 3/4 oz. Redneck 180 slab with Hazy Eye Stinger hooks attached. We worked over the white bass for a while until the sun had risen and brightened the sky sufficiently to get the largemouth popping on top.
We experimented with several shad imitations before finding just the right lure for the situation. Once we locked onto that solution, we could count on hooking a largemouth on 4 out of every 5 accurate, timely casts.
Things quieted down a bit around 9:15 with our tally at 79 fish. I told Logan we’d really have to buckle down and make every fish count if we were going to be able to have a 100 fish day. We downrigged to find more fish, catching singles, doubles, and even one triple as we went, and with, about 20 minutes remaining in our trip, brought our tally up to 92 when we happened upon a “haystack” of white bass in about 29 feet of water.
I Spot Locked on top of these fish, got the thumper going, and we began marching toward 100 fish. By 10:23 we put our 100th fish in the boat and “boogied” back to the boat ramp to meet up with Logan’s mom who was to link up with us at 10:25.
This catch was a “personal best” for Logan.
TALLY: 100 FISH, all caught and released
TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:
Start Time: 6:25am
End Time: 10:25am
Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 81F
Water Surface Temp: 86F
Wind Speed & Direction: SSW breeze ~8 mph the entire trip
Sky Conditions: Cloudless
Water Level: 0.22 feet high and slowly falling with only evaporative losses of ~0.02 feet per day; 0 cfs release at dam
GT = 0
Wx SNAPSHOT:
AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:
**Area 1965 – all fish caught with 70 yards including topwater largmouth and bottom-hugging white bass and drum.
Bob Maindelle
Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service
254.368.7411 (call or text)
Website: www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com
E-mail: Bob@HoldingTheLineGuideService.com
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