This morning, Monday, July 24th, I welcomed aboard Jayden Barrios of Killeen and Cam Lazar of Harker Heights for a morning of multi-species fishing on Stillhouse Hollow.

Jayden Barrios, son of US Army SSG Adam Barrios and Mrs. Stacy Barrios, joined me for a morning of multi-species fishing on Stillhouse.  He landed largemouth bass, white bass, sunfish, and blacktailed shiners.

Cam Lazar landed this nice pair of two-year-old white bass at the same time on 2 of the 3 Pet Spoons attached to the 3-armed umbrella rig we were downrigging with.  Cam and his mom, Danielle, live in Harker Heights, TX.

Jayden’s dad, US Army Staff Sergeant Adam Barrios, is currently on his 4th deployment in his 13 years on active duty.  SSG Barrios’ current assignment has him in Kandahar, Afghanistan, working in an explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) unit.

Cam lives with his mom (non-military connected), and I learned through a mutual friend of hers and mine that he loved to fish but didn’t have a means to pursue his interest to the level he desires.  Since I had a light load of anglers this morning, and knowing that the boys were close in age, I invited him along.

I picked both boys up between 6:00 and 6:15am at their homes and we then headed for the boat ramp.

The first 45 minutes on the water were fairly calm, and so this made for easy spotting of largemouth feeding on shad at the surface which in turn led us to even more fish which were suspended or holding on or near bottom.  We immediately got into white bass with the balls set where sonar dictated and, as we slowly idled with the downriggers fishing.

As the boys worked the ‘riggers, I watched sonar closely for the presence of large groups of white bass holding on bottom.  When we encountered what I was looking for, I stopped the boat atop these fish using the Spot Lock function on the Ulterra trolling motor.  As the motor worked it magic getting us in a hover over the fish, we quickly put up the downrigger rods, cleared the downrigging gear, and changed over to ready-to-use vertical jigging rods.  The instant our lines hung vertically, we dropped onto the fish below and started working them over.  We got into 3 separate successful scenarios like this this morning, allowing for a total of 45 white bass and 3 largemouth bass to be landed before we switched over to sunfishing in our last 40 minutes just for variety’s sake.

In those last 40 minutes, the boys handily put another 32 fish in the boat including longear sunfish, bluegill sunfish, and blacktailed shiners.  We used long bream poles and slipfloats for this work.

When all was said and done around 10:30, we’d amassed a catch of 80 fish.  The boys ate non-stop on the boatride back to the ramp, and on the truck ride back to their homes.  Jayden said, “I was so excited about the different fishing, I forgot to eat”.

TALLY: 80 FISH, all caught and released

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 6:25am

End Time: 10:35am

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 78F

Water Surface Temp: 85.8F

Wind Speed & Direction: S breeze under 10 mph the entire trip

Sky Conditions: 100% haze/thin grey cloud cover sufficient to block the direct sun

Water Level: 0.15 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 vic 484 to 1968 — downrigging and smoking

**Area 668 to 1970 — downrigging and smoking

**Area 1098 – sunfish on slipfloats

 

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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