This past week I ran two trips (Thursday AM and Saturday AM) with members of the Oliver clan, encompassing four generations.
On Thursday morning, Cullen pulled this “double”, catching 2 fish at a time on the 3-armed umbrella rig we were using.
Not to be outdone, Cullen’s twin 7-year-old sister, Presley, pulled up a double of her own just a few minutes after Cullen’s.
Cullen and Presley’s 5-year-old sister, Harper (with dad, Corey), hung right in there with her older siblings Thursday morning.
On Saturday, from left, Cullen made another appearance, this time joined by his cousins, Ben and Beau. That’s Grandpa Joe looking on.
3-year-old Beau wasn’t too sure about holding his own fish, so his mom, Amber, gave him a hand. That’s 87-year-old “Paw” Oliver, Beau’s great-grandfather, on the right!
This past Thursday morning, July 27th, I fished with three generations of Olivers. Mr. Joe Oliver, the principal of Cameron High School, treated his son, Corey, and Cory’s three children,Cullen, Presley, and Harper to a morning fishing trip on Stillhouse Hollow.
Given the kids ages – – seven year old twins and five-year-old Harper, the heat we were expecting by late morning, and how the fishery has been performing as of late, we decided it best to make this a “kids Fish, Too!” Trip, thus focusing just on the kids’ success and reducing the time spent on the water from 4+ hours down to just 3 1/2.
In retrospect, this worked out very, very well.
We began the day keeping the kids as engaged as possible while downrigging for as long as possible, as this horizontal presentation has definitely beat out vertical presentations over the course of this entire week.
In order to keep the kids engaged, we simply try to have them participate in as much as possible by taking the time to explain what needed to be done and why, and then modeling that for them and encouraging them to do these things themselves. Tasks included letting the line out the right distance behind the boat, clipping the fishing line into the downrigger release clip, setting the downrigger ball down to depth, and, of course, reeling in the fish.
Although we did try to mix in a little bit of vertical work for the sake of variety, we really did not see that approach work very well at all.
By about 9 AM, even the horizontal presentation of downrigging was beginning to lose its appeal to the fish.
With about an hour’s time left, we headed up shallow, equipped the kids with bream poles, and began to target sunfish in shallow, cover filled water.
We began this effort with 41 fish already landed, and were able to put an additional 23 fish in the boat in our final chapter.
On Saturday, Joe and Joe’s dad “Paw” Oliver joined us, as his two of Joe’s adult children, Corey and Amber. Corey’s son, Cullen, made a repeat appearance, and Amber’s boys, Ben and Beau, joined us, as well for a 4-generation boatload of 8,myself included .
We pretty much repeated the downrigging for white bass and shallow fishing for sunfish that we’d enjoyed Thursday, although the white bass bite was a bit softer today. In 2.5 hours of downrigging effort, we put 28 white bass, 2 largemouth bass, and 1 freshwater drum in the boat, and, in the final hour of sunfishing, put another 20 sunfish of various sorts in the boat for a total of 51 fish on Saturday.
Amber’s capture of a “triple” – one fish on each of the 3 lures on a 3-armed umbrella rig was one of the highlights of the trip, as was 3-year-old Beau’s solo sunfish catch right at the end of our trip.
TALLY: 62 FISH THURSDAY + 51 FISH SATURDAY = 113 FISH, all caught and released
ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS/NOTES:
Thursday
Start Time: 6:45a
End Time: 10:15a
Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 81F (NOAA Heat Advisory in effect)
Water Surface Temp: 85.7F
Wind Speed & Direction: SSE breeze under 10 mph the entire trip
Sky Conditions: 30% cloud cover
Water Level: 0.05 feet high and slowly falling with only evaporative losses of ~0.02 feet per day; 0 cfs release at dam
Saturday
Start Time: 6:25a
End Time: 10:20a
Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 83F (NOAA Heat Advisory in effect)
Water Surface Temp: 85.7F
Wind Speed & Direction: SSE breeze under 8 mph the entire trip
Sky Conditions: 60% cloud cover
Water Level: 0.01 feet high and slowly falling with only evaporative losses of ~0.02 feet per day; 0 cfs release at dam
GT = 210
Wx SNAPSHOT:
Thursday
Saturday
AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:
Thursday
**Area 660-484 for white bass on downriggers early
**Area 484-1221 for white bass on downriggers mid-morning
**Area 851-251 for white bass on downriggers late
**Area 1416 for sunfish
Saturday
**Area 1234-484 for white bass on downriggers first half of bite
**Area 458-1442 for white bass on downriggers last half of bite
**Area 1098 for sunfish
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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