WHO I FISHED WITH: This morning, Monday, March 7th, I fished with returning guests Tommy & Sylvia Maedgen from the Temple, TX, area.
Between poor weather and an unusually high number of requests for sonar training, I’d not been on the water with clients in several days, but did fit in a few hours of scouting last Friday, which paid dividends this morning.
Here is how the fishing went …
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My next few openings will be on March 30th and April 4th thru 7th. Weekday mornings are always best.
PHOTO CAPTION: Tommy and Sylvia Maedgen with a sampling of the quality fish Stillhouse will put out in this pre-spawn period. That fish on the far right of the photo which Sylvia is holding is 15.25 inches long.
WHERE WE FISHED: Stillhouse Hollow
WHEN WE FISHED: Monday (AM), 07 March 2021
HOW WE FISHED:
There are a lot of opinions out there about how cold fronts impact fishing. Concerning temperate bass (white bass, striped bass, and their hybrids), I have observed that the negative impacts of a cold front occur well after the actual front has passed, and after the skies clear, winds go slack, and the ambient temperature drops. This week, that poor set of conditions is not set to exist until Wednesday afternoon.
So, despite the cold this morning, I welcomed the wind and cloud cover, and we did well cashing in on quality white bass at Stillhouse Hollow, as “dribs and drabs” of fish in small schools begin to fin their way to the spawning grounds thanks to last week’s nice warmup.
Well-tuned side-imaging helped us focus on productive areas this morning. My plan (derived during my scouting last week when I had a chance to offer multiple presentations to gauge fish preference) was to fish horizontally by positioning to the side (crosswind) of the fish we were targeting, instead of positioning atop them as we would for vertical presentations.
This is a bit tricky, and requires that you “read” the wind.
Once we positioned the boat crosswind from the fish, we cast perpendicular to the port or starboard side of the boat so we could fish for fish we knew were present, as seen on side imaging.
After picking up three solid fish on slabs fished vertically, we relied on horizontal presentations for the next several hours.
Tommy and Sylvia were the first to use the newest member of the MAL Lure family, the MAL Dense, which is designed to sink the fastest of all MAL Lures, thanks to a lead body in lieu of the brass body found on the original and heavy versions.
We worked these baits back to the boat with a sawtooth pattern using small diameter, low (5.2:1) gear ratio spinning reels to achieve a slow retrieve, reeling just fast enough to keep the blade spinning. In years past I would normally rely upon a bladebait for this work, but, the MAL fills the bill nicely.
Birds were somewhat helpful in the first 90 minutes, then slacked off. Although they never really pointed the way to fish directly, their presence gave me some clues as to where bait fish were and were not.
Tommy had recently gone through some surgery on his back and, after standing for 3/4ths of the trip, he started feeling it a little bit. At this time, I chose to make a transition from horizontal fishing to vertical fishing in deeper, clearer water. This coincided with a slowdown in the action, right around 10:45.
The deepwater bite was very slow, and, it didn’t help that we were trying to get bit late in the morning. We added only 2 more fish to our count on slabs fished vertically at this point in the trip.
We caught 42 white bass this morning, 37 of which came on MAL Dense Lures with white body and chartreuse tail.
Bladed Hazy Eye Slabs and MAL Lures are found here: https://whitebasstools.com/
TALLY: 42 fish caught and released
OBSERVATIONS: Given the weather we’ve just experienced, and the weather forecast for the remainder of this week, it looks like another 10+ days before real evidence of white bass migration becomes a reality.
WEATHER DATA:
Start Time: 7:15A
End Time: 12:00 Noon
Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 41F
Elevation: 3.10 feet low, 0.02′ rise in last 24 hours, 1 CFS flow
Water Surface Temp: 53.6F
Wind Speed & Direction: N12-15 all morning
Sky Condition: 100% grey cloud cover all morning
Moon Phase: Waning crescent moon at 23% illumination.
GT = 25
Wx SNAPSHOT:
AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:
Areas SH0099C, SH0071G, SH0072G, SH0073G
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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