They Flew 1,740 Miles for Their First White Bass — 60 Fish

by Bob Maindelle

CLIENTS:  This morning, Monday, Feb. 17, I fished with father-and-son team Jason and JJ Yick of Danville, CA.  Jason and his family flew into Austin over the weekend to visit his daughter now in her junior year at Baylor University in Waco.  While sis went to class and mom slept in, Jason and JJ braved the 28F start to work in a half-day of fishing targeting white bass in pre-spawn mode.

 

DATE: Monday, 17 February 2025 (AM)

NEXT OPEN DATES:  18-21 February (AM)

 

PHOTO CAPTION:  From left:  Jason and JJ Yick came in to visit JJ’s sister at Baylor University and snuck in a little fishing while sister was hitting the books and mom was hitting the snooze button.  Multiple 15″ white bass were a part of their cool-water catch this morning on Hazy Eye Slabs.

 

WHERE WE FISHED: Stillhouse Hollow Reservoir

SUMMARY OF HOW WE FISHED:

The story behind the story is water temperature.  If you look below, you’ll see the water temperature at the end of our most recent warming trend which ended on Saturday, 08 Feb., and this morning’s water temperature after a cold, cloudy week last week.  This significant drop in water temperature at the 25′ level and shallower moved the fishing back to pre-spawn mode after the first few fish had begun showing up just shy of traditional spring spawning areas over a week ago.
With the water cooled back down, we returned to the tactics which have served me so well over this winter and during winters past — working the white, 5/8 oz. Bladed Hazy Eye Slab with a slow-smoking tactic, and working the white, curl-tail grub on a jighead slowly and horizontally along bottom.
As we found our first group of fish to target around 7:40A, they would not budge off the bottom to chase the slab vertically, so, we gave ’em a try horizontally with the jighead and grub.  This was the ticket as it covered a lot of ground, did so slowly and methodically, and never really rose up out of the fishes’ strike zone, which was within 18-24″ of bottom.
Jason and JJ wound up boating 14 fish this way.  This would be the only time we had to fish this tight to bottom for the rest of the morning.
We would go on to fish 5 additional areas, each with fish initially tight to bottom, but which would respond by swimming vertically upwards to chase a slow-smoked Bladed Hazy Eye Slab (white, 5/8 oz.).
At the last of these five areas (and the last place we would find biting fish from ~10:40 to 11:05) the fish were definitely coming off their feed quickly.  In this scenario, I had the fellows use an easing tactic to ensure that the slab was coming off the bottom as smoothly as possible as the “chase window” for these fish shrank to less than a foot from bottom.
We ended the morning with 60 fish landed, including 3 white bass over 15″, several drum, and several largemouth bass in the mix.

RESULTS: 60 fish, all caught and released

 

TUTORIAL VIDEO ON HOW TO DO “SLOW SMOKING”: Click here for tutorial

TUTORIAL VIDEO ON HOW TO DO “EASING” WITH A SLAB: Click here for tutorial

TUTORIAL VIDEO ON HOW TO SNAP-JIG:  Click here for tutorial

 

LURES USED SUCCESSFULLY ON THIS TRIP: We used the white, 5/8 oz. Bladed Hazy Eye Slab and 1/2 oz. jigheads with white curl-tail grubs to catch our fish this trip. Find all MAL Lures and Hazy Eye Slabs here: https://whitebasstools.com/

 

OBSERVATIONS:

1) Bird activity was present, but heavily weighted toward loons.

2) Best fishing came in the middle two hours this morning.

 

LATEST WATER TEMPERATURE PROFILE:

Here was the water temperature profile for Stillhouse Hollow, measured with a FishHawk TD device around 7:00AM on Monday, 17 Feb. …

0 feet 52.5F
5 feet 52.8F
10 feet 52.8F
15 feet 52.8F
20 feet 52.8F
25 feet 52.8F
30 feet 52.8F
35 feet 52.8F
40 feet 52.5F
45 feet 51.7F
50 feet 51.6F
55 feet 51.4F
60 feet 51.1F
And here was the reading around 7:00AM on Saturday, 08 Feb. …
0 feet 56.7F
5 feet 56.5F
10 feet 56.5F
15 feet 56.1F
20 feet 54.2F
25 feet 52.8F
30 feet 52.2F
35 feet 51.9F
40 feet 51.6F
45 feet 51.4F
50 feet 51.3F
55 feet 50.9F
60 feet 50.5F

WEATHER DATA:

Start Time: 7:15A

End Time: 11:25A

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 28F

Elevation: 2.91′ low

Water Surface Temp: 52.5F on the surface.

Wind Speed & Direction: SSE3 at sunrise, increasing steadily to SSE12-13

Sky Condition: Light blue sky all morning with under 15% white cloud cover

Moon Phase: Waning gibbous moon at 77% illumination.

GT = 85

 

Wx SNAPSHOT: N/A

 

 

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

Area vic 1960 – 14 fish on jighead/grub

Area vic 942 – 8 fish slow smoking slabs

Area vic 785 – 11 fish slow smoking slabs

Area vic 1690 – 10 fish slow smoking slabs

Area vic SH0005G – 9 fish slow smoking slabs

Area vic 108 – 8 fish easing slabs

 

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

Leave a Reply