16 | August | 2020 | Fishing Report

WHO I FISHED WITH: This past Saturday morning, 15 August 2020, I fished with Cullen Mills and his 10-year-old son, Noah, on Stillhouse Hollow Reservoir.

Cullen makes a living running the family business, Modern TV and Appliance, in Killeen. This business has been in the family for several generations and was at one time run by T.J. Mills, after whom T.J. Mills Boulevard on Fort Hood is named.

Of the two, Noah is the more “hardcore” angler and was just thirsty for knowledge about fish and fishing.

I was impressed at how well-spoken Noah was, and the sort of pretty insightful questions he asked.

Somewhere in our conversation Noah spoke of having big dreams, including becoming a billionaire. When I asked if he had a plan to help achieve that dream, he told me of his plans to develop a jet-powered automobile — kinda’ George Jetson-style. How many 10-year-olds (or 30-year-olds, for that matter) have a goal for their lives?

PHOTO CAPTION #1: Cullen and Noah Mills with a sampling of Stillhouse Hollow’s quality white bass. The two plump specimens Noah displays each exceeded 14″ in length.

WHEN WE FISHED: 16 August, 2020, AM

WHERE WE FISHED: Stillhouse Hollow Reservoir

HOW WE FISHED: As we met at the courtesy dock around 6:30, I went over the morning’s game plan. We would employ two tactics for white bass: downrigging and “smoking” vertically with MAL Lures. We’d also save time at the end of the trip to introduce Noah to fishing for shallow water sunfish so that either on foot or on his grandpa’s boat, he could be sure to catch fish during the warm-water season.

This game plan worked out well for us. The fish were a bit “reserved” in the first 90 minutes of the morning as the winds were barely moving the water’s surface. We graphed a lot more fish than we had bite, but kept a steady feed of singles and doubles coming in the boat, and, every one of them were in great shape, length-wise and girth-wise. We even managed one triple! All of these fish were suspended in small “wolfpacks” of 6-20 fish, holding at 28-35 feet down.

We ran our downrigger balls at 28 and 30 feet with a silver/white trio of #12 Pet Spoons on one ‘rigger and a silver/yellow trio of #13 Pets on the other. The smaller white/silver did seem to do a bit better, albeit barely.

As the winds came up and shifted from S to SSW, I began looking in shallower areas where the bottom was located shallower than the thermocline. Two of the areas we checked held fish in the lower 3 feet of the water column, thus allowing us to fish MAL Lures vertically to catch a number of fish quickly while sitting atop these fish in a hover.

I noted a tendency in these fish which I also noted this past Friday on Lake Belton … that was for these fish to move on pretty quickly. Even though we were catching fish, and even though I beat the surface to create commotion to imitate surface feeding to draw fish in, we would only pick up a few fish at a time before having to “jog” one way or another to reconnect with the fish.

By the time 10:15 rolled around, the white bass were beginning to get really sluggish and unresponsive, so, we closed out that portion of our trip and headed up shallow to introduce Noah to sunfishing.

The dropping water level hindered the sunfishing a bit, as the coves where these fish tend to locate are somewhat clogged with hydrilla now left matted over on the surface, which makes presentation of baits much more challenging, especially for kids not accustomed to using the poles I incorporate into this technique. Regardless, Noah yanked 5 sunfish in 8 strikes and, when asked by his dad, “Are you having fun?”, Noah replied, “Too much fun!!”.

TALLY: 40 fish caught and released

OBSERVATIONS: As they did at Belton on Friday, the white bass seemed reluctant to “stay put” once located this morning, forcing us to move and make “short hops” when fishing vertically with MAL Lures.

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 6:30A

End Time: 10:55A

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 78F

Elevation: 2.13′ low, -0.05′ 24-hour change, 1 CFS flow

Water Surface Temp: 84.7F

Wind Speed & Direction: S13-14 before sunrise, dropping off to S11 right around sunrise.

Sky Condition: ~15% white cloud cover with light blue skies and low humidity

Moon Phase: Waning crescent with 16% illumination

GT = 0

Wx SNAPSHOT: