AND THEN CAME CHOCOLATE MILK – 53 FISH @ STILLHOUSE

by Bob Maindelle

WHO I FISHED WITH:  This past Thursday morning I fished with returning guests Tiffany Stork and her dad, John Jonse.  This time, Tiffany brought along her youngest son, 11-year-old Tyler, after giving him a fishing gift certificate for Christmas.  Tyler did very well with his first try at the kind of fishing we did today.

 

Tyler Stork of Cameron, TX, battled this 5 1/8 pound channel catfish on light spinning tackle after hooking it from out of a school of white bass we had been steadily catching.  At times, catfish and drum come in to a white bass feeding frenzy to police up the regurgitated shad that the white bass throw up as they are being reeled in.  Great job, Tyler!

And here are a few of those white bass that drew in the drum and the catfish we landed.  From left that’s John Jonse, John’s grandson Tyler Stork, and Tyler’s mom, Tiffany Stork.

WHAT WE FISHED FOR:  This was a multi-species trip focused on white bass.  

WHERE WE FISHED: Stillhouse Hollow

WHEN WE FISHED: Thursday,  December 27, 2018

HOW WE FISHED: A line of violent storms passed quickly through central Texas overnight from west to east on the lead edge of a cold front.  The storm dumped 1.6 inches of rain over us and west of us in both the Belton Lake and Stillhouse Hollow watersheds.  Both lakes rose about a foot and a half very quickly as the storm produced a lot of runoff.  As we headed out around 7:15a, there was a distinct debris line near the Cedar Gap Park with very turbid water upstream from there.  We dropped back into still-clear water and were fortunate to get into 3-year class white bass by casting blade baits up shallow as we sat hovering in 15′.  As the bite was dying around 8:30, the debris line was nearly upon us and the water was now opaque, resembling diluted chocolate milk.  Later in the day as I drove over the FM3481 bridge, it was obvious that the mud line extended all the way downstream to the Union Grove Park area.  We picked up 20 fish before the shallow bite slacked off.

We moved downstream into clearer, deeper water and found two distinct groups of fish, both offering us about 50 minutes’ worth of fishing before the fish in these areas grew disinterested and stopped biting.  Our last fish came aboard around 10:50 when the wind shifted suddenly from SSE to W and ramped up from around 8 mph to over 15mph.  We landed 53 fish in total and wrapped up our trip right at the 4-hour mark.  The fish we caught at these last two deep-water areas all came on 3/8 oz. white slabs with Hazy Eye Stinger hooks attached; we used a snap-jigging tactic for all of this deep-water work.

OBSERVATIONS:   No helpful bird activity today; Stillhouse will need to be left alone for ~ a week to allow the silt from last night’s flooding to settle sufficiently to allow for white bass action on artificials.

TALLY: 53 fish caught and released

 

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 7:15 a

End Time: 11:15 a

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 52F

Water Surface Temp: 54.1F

Wind Speed & Direction: SSE under 3mph at trip’s start, slowly increasing to SSE8, but then shifting suddenly and ramping up greatly to W15 around 10:50.

Sky Conditions:  Cloudless blue skies after the passage of a storm front overnight.

Water Level: 4.66′ high with an overnite rise of 0.52 and a flow of 1495 cfs 

GT = 40

#WhiteBassFishing #LakeBelton #StillhouseHollow

Wx SNAPSHOT:    

 

 

 

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS FRIDAY: 

**Area SH0089C – shallow bladebait action for 20 whites

**Area SH0088C – deep snap-jigging

**Area SH0087C – deep snap-jigging

 

Bob Maindelle, Belton Lake Fishing Guide

Full-time, Professional Fishing Guide and Owner of Holding the Line Guide Service

Belton Lake Fishing Guide, Stillhouse Hollow Fishing Guide

 

254.368.7411 (call or text)

Website: www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

E-mail: Bob@HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/bobmaindelle

Twitter: www/twitter.com/bobmaindelle

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