WHO I FISHED WITH: This past Saturday morning, May 15th, I conducted the fourth SKIFF trip of the 2021 season.

SKIFF is an acronym for Soldiers’ Kids Involved in Fishing Fun. It is a program now in its 12th year, sponsored by the Austin Fly Fishers, and supported by individuals and entities, all of whom desire that kids separated from a parent by that parent’s military duty, be given an opportunity to experience the outdoors through fishing during that time of separation, free of charge.  The program offers a time of respite for the home-front parents who made need a short break from single-parenting.

This morning I was joined by Mrs. Soo Yi and her four children, three of which were old enough to participate in the fishing.  On the rods today were 7-year-old Kaleo, 6-year-old Shalom, and 4-year-old Zech (and on snack and nap duty was 2-year-old Shiloh!).

The children’s father U.S. Army Captain Joshua Yi has been deployed for seven months now to Poland where he serves his fellow soldiers as a chaplain there.  The Yi family has been part of the military for 2 years now.  They are stationed at Fort Hood and live in Copperas Cove.

Incredibly, despite juggling 4 young kids single-handedly, and making part of the drive to the launch site in the dark, Mrs. Yi arrived about 10 minutes early with the kids fully equipped and clothed as I’d specified in the pre-trip email I sent to her two days in advance.

 

PHOTO CAPTION:    In front, from left: Shalom, Zech, and Kaleo Yi, chaperoned by their mom, Soo Yi, on today’s SKIFF trip provided free of charge to military kids separated from their parents by military duty.  Not shown is 2-year-old Shiloh, who was napping soundly in the bow.

WHERE WE FISHED: Stillhouse Hollow Reservoir

WHEN WE FISHED: Saturday (AM), 15 May 2021

HOW WE FISHED:

With kids so young, experience told me we needed to “keep things moving”, meaning we could not do any one tactic in any one place for very long or else the kids would lose interest, even if we were being successful.

I broke the trip up into 3 parts over the 3.5 hours we fished.  Part one involved downrigging with twin downriggers equipped with 3-armed umbrella rigs rigged with #12 and #13 Pet Spoons.  We worked deep flats in open water and did well, landing 21 white bass, including a triple (one fish on each of the three lures of the umbrella rig simultaneously), six doubles, and 6 singles.  The downrigging allows the kids to move about the boat while the ‘riggers are working the lures, and lends itself to taking turns and making sure everyone catches about the same number of fish.

The second part of our adventure involved heading up shallow to pursue sunfish with poles and fixed-length lines.  The sunfish aren’t teeming in the shallows quite yet due to the cool, cloudy weather we’ve been having, but we managed 5 longear sunfish regardless.

We closed out the trip using MAL Lures for congregated, bottom-hugging white bass caught with the aid of Garmin LiveScope, which the kids loved.  They got quite excited every time a pack of red footballs (the fish signatures on the Garmin color palette I prefer) showed up moving left and right on the screen.

I found a nice school of white bass occupying a gentle break in about 32 feet of water, Spot-Locked on them, and got them stirred up as the MAL Lures started working their magic.  We more than doubled our catch of 26 fish up to that point, taking our tally to 56 fish in our final 40 minutes on the water.

By 10:30 both the kids and the fish were wearing out, so, we headed back to the dock.

Hazy Eye Slabs, MAL Lures, and Stinger Hooks are found here: https://whitebasstools.com/

TALLY: 56 fish caught and released (51 white bass, 5 sunfish)

OBSERVATIONS:   I took a temperature profile this morning, as follows:

0 feet 72F
5 feet 72.1F
10 feet 72.2F
15 feet 72.1F
20 feet 71.7F
25 feet 71.6F
30 feet 71.5F
35 feet 70.5F
40 feet 67.9F
45 feet 65.5F
50 feet 61.1F
55 feet 57.5F
60 feet 54.3F
65 feet  53.6F

TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time:  7:00A

End Time: 10:30A

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 64F

Elevation:  0.14 feet high, +0.01 24-hour change, 1 CFS flow

Water Surface Temp: 72F

Wind Speed & Direction: ESE7 at trip’s start, shifting and increasing to SE11 by trip’s end

Sky Condition: 100% grey cloud cover all morning

Moon Phase: Waxing crescent; 12% illumination

GT = 0

Wx SNAPSHOT:

 

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 1741 – 21 whites on downrigged Pet Spoons

**Area SH0132C – 5 sunfish

**Area vic 130 – 30 whites on MAL Lures

 

Bob Maindelle

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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