This morning I fished on Stillhouse Hollow with Michael Szkrybalo and his 13-year-old son, Colton, of Round Rock, TX.

Michael Szkrybalo with a pair of healthy Stillhouse white bass that fell to his slab worked tight to bottom right after sunrise.

Colton worked out a few technique kinks over the course of the trip and, by trip’s end, was consistently detecting strikes, setting the hook well, and properly playing fish to the boat.

Michael is an emergency medicine physician with the Scott and White system out of Georgetown.  He and Colton had been fishing with me once before two years ago in May.  The family owns a vacation home on Lake Michigan where, during the summers, Colton attends a sailing school, learning to maneuver and race 12-foot-long Pico-type sailboats.

After really struggling over on Belton lately, I decided to switch back over to fishing on Stillhouse today, and I am glad we did so.  Usually by now there is abundant bird activity on Belton that helps lead the way to catchable white bass and hybrid striper, but that simply has not yet materialized.  If I have to find fish on sonar, I’d rather do it on Stillhouse as there is not near as much ground to cover.

We got on fish early today, stayed on them for about 2 hours, then experienced an hour’s lull, then found fish re-energized after the wind ramped up an extra 4-5 mph.

The first group of fish we found were mostly solid, 13-14 inch 3 year old fish with a few 2 year class fish sprinkled in.  We found these fish in 30-34 feet of water on a patch of bottom triangulated by Areas 1493/1266/988.  A silver/chartreuse Redneck Fish’n Jigs model 180 in 3/4 oz. did the trick on exactly 40 white bass here.  Although we threw in an “easing” tactic, most of the fish responded best to a straightforward vertical jigging technique.

The second group of fish we got on were in more murky 25-27 feet of water.  This was a tightly bunched, aggressively feeding school of fish with a “pyramid” structure including lots of 1 year class fish, a few 2 year class fish, and a sprinkling of 3 year class fish.  These smaller fish showed a definite preference for the white 3/8 oz. slab and fell hard for the easing tactic given that the most active fish were holding 2-3 feet off bottom, not laying belly-to-the-bottom like the larger fish were earlier in the morning.

We sat in one boat-sized area for 80 minutes and boated exactly 88 white bass and 2 freshwater drum, taking our tally from 40 fish up to 130 fish.  And, we actually left these fish biting as Michael and Colton mutually agreed to call it a day around 12:20p and head back in.

TALLY = 130 FISH, all caught and released

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 7:15a

End Time:  12:30p

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start:  52F

Water Surface Temp:  57F

Wind Speed & Direction:  SSW10 at sunrise, increasing to SSW18-20 by trip’s end

Sky Conditions: Cloudless fair skies.

Other: GT=0

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area  1493/1266/988 spot-hopped several times within the bounds of this area for a total of 40 white bass in 2 &3 year class (BA = 4G)

**Area  1492 boated 90 fish in the 1, 2, & 3 year class in under 80 minutes (BA = 4G)

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

This morning, 24 Nov., I welcomed back returning guests Mike McLaughlin, and his son-in-law and grandson, Keith and Alex Duncan, for their fourth annual outing with me.  Each year Mike’s wife, Christa, has been nice enough to get him a gift certificate for Christmas, and, each year around late October or November my phone rings to set up the trip.  Today was the day.

Keith landed our top two fish this morning coming right out of the shoot just after sunrise.

Alex and grandpa Mike reeled these two fish in at the same time out of ~38 feet of water on a breakline around mid-morning.

We had an uphill battle facing us today thanks to the passage of a cold front late yesterday, leaving a north wind and high pressure in its wake today.  The fish will bite in such conditions as long as there is wind, but they are never overly aggressive and the bite often doesn’t last long on any given school of fish.

We encountered 4 distinct schools of fish today and pulled  about 10-12 fish from each before the schools lost interest and we had to start all over again looking for them, jigging to get them interested, then enjoying a few fish before having to repeat the cycle.

Our early fish came from the shallowest water, around 34 feet, and our fish caught late in the trip came from 48 feet.

All of our action came on smoked slabs, with a few fish caught on a slabbing tactic as the bite was about to die off.  The bite finally died for good around 12:10p after the N wind died to near calm.

Once again there was no helpful bird activity at all today, which is unusual for this late in the season — hopefully that will change soon.

We wound up with a mixed bag of keeper and short hybrid, keeper and short white bass, a drum, and a largemouth, all taken on a white/silver Redneck Fish’n Jigs 180 Slab in 3/4 oz.

I should note that Mike had quite a number of proverbs to pass on to young Alex.  He would initiate these with the phrase, “Alex, there’s an old saying that…”.   For example, Mike said, “Alex, there’s an old saying that a bad day of fishing is still better than a good day of work.”  In fact, Mike had so many of these sayings that we had to impose a rule that the person who spoke the most “old sayings” also had to buy lunch.  This reduced the number of “old sayings” going forward, but, the damage was already done … I believe they drove from the boat ramp directly to Schoepf’s BBQ!

TALLY = 47 FISH, all caught and released

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 7:15a

End Time:  12:10p

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start:  46F

Water Surface Temp:  59.4-59.6F

Wind Speed & Direction:  NW13, tapering down to NW6, then shifting to N and increasing to 8, before dying around noon.

Sky Conditions: 10% high white bands of clouds on a bluebird sky

Other: GT=30;

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area   1489 early

**Area  1383 mid-morning

**Area 1487 mid-morning

**Area 1488 late

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

Salado, TX

www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

This Saturday morning, 15 Nov., I fished with Tom Tharp of Temple, Texas, and 3 other family members including Tom’s niece, Jennifer Rand, Jennifer’s niece, 7-year-old Alyssa Rand, and Jennifer’s boyfriend, Jonathan Kusch.

Jennifer landed our largest fish of the trip this morning, a nice 23″, 5.75 pound hybrid.

L to R: Tom Tharp, Alyssa Rand, Jonathan Kutsch, and Jennifer Rand all worked over the white bass and hybrid striper this morning using TNT180 slabs in 32-38 feet of water.  This photo shows our 4 best white bass of the trip, ranging from 12.25 to 13.25 inches.

Tom and I first met at the Central Texas Boat Show last January where we spoke at my booth about sonar use and settings for Belton Lake and Stillhouse Hollow Reservoir.  Tom is an internal auditor working at Scott & White in Temple, Jennifer is a student at the University of Texas in Austin, Jonathan works at a golf cart dealership in Austin, and Miss Alyssa is a 2nd grade student in the Austin area.  About 2 weeks ago Tom called and wanted to get on the calendar.  Fortunately, the weather cooperated for us today and we did quite well.

We’ve been plagued all week by high north winds that came in on Tuesday with the season’s most severe cold front thus far.  This cold front dropped our surface temperatures from 66-67F down to 61-62F in a matter of 4 days.  Today was the only day where a wind with a southerly component was in the forecast out of the previous four days, as well as for the next 3 days.  This return to southerly winds always makes for solid fishing, as does the wind shift through the west in advance of an approaching front.  We truly threaded the eye of the needle in regards to being on the water in these ideal conditions.

We caught fish from start to finish today.  As I waited on conditions to brighten after our 6:55a launch, we did a bit of downrigging for some “high-riding” white bass and hybrid striper, putting (go figure!) a single largemouth in the boat.  We  didn’t spend long at this as it brightened up pretty well (despite the cloud cover) once the sun rose.

With good wind and light conditions now in place, we used sonar to sweep deep-water areas in a search for active, congregated fish.  We did not have to spend long looking, as we found what we were after fairly quickly and got to work using a “smoking” technique to elicit a predator response from the active fish in the area we were fishing.  The action steadily rose to a peak at between 9:00a and 9:30a, then begin to fall back off again thereafter.

During this peak time, I observed the first bit of helpful bird activity of the season, sighting 6 gulls working over a suspended school of mixed white bass and short hybrid driving bait to near the surface.  We made a series of “short hops” with the boat using i-Pilot technology to “Spot-Lock” ourselves on top of active fish as dictated by sonar returns.  During this peak, it was not uncommon for 2 or 3 rods of our 5 rods to be bent with fish on at any given time.  Easily 40 of our fish came over the side during this window of high activity.

Although I experimented from time to time with a few variations on the vertical jigging theme, the smoking tactic beat them all, which is not surprising given that the water is still in the 60’s.

With the 117 fish boated on this trip, the average catch per trip on Belton this November now stands at 89.8 fish/trip with a total of 449 fish caught over the course of 5 trips taken on this lake thus far.  I expect this fishing will hold up at least until the Thanksgiving week and until the surface temperatures dip into the lower 50’s; things will then moderate and fishing will get a bit tougher as the fish get more lethargic.

We landed 1 largemouth, 3 drum, 9 legal hybrid striped bass, and a mix of 104 short hybrid stripers and white bass of all sizes up to 13 inches.  Since they kept track among themselves, Alyssa caught the most fish, Jennifer caught the biggest fish, Jonathan caught the first fish, and Tom got to pay for the trip!!

TALLY = 117 FISH, all caught and released

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 6:55a

End Time:  11:25a

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start:  41F, increasing slowly to 47F due to thick cloud cover.

Water Surface Temp:  61-62F

Wind Speed & Direction:  SSE11-12.

Sky Conditions: 100% clouded, grey skies

Other: GT=60; BA = 6 G, 7T

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area  1403/1223 downrigging early

**Area 1288, 1482, 1483, 355/955, 1152, and 1484 (spot hopping to stay on top of fish with some bird assistance)

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

Salado, TX

www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

This morning I fished with Jake Prishkulnik and Jeff Pollock, both businessmen from the Santa Fe, New Mexico area.  They signed up for a squash tournament in Dallas on Saturday and Sunday (in which they placed 1st & 2nd), and finished out their tour of Texas with a fishing trip on Belton.

L to R: Jake Prishkulnik and Jeff Pollock teamed up to put together a catch of 115 fish today in the face of a stiff south wind generated by pre-frontal warming in advance of the season’s hardest cold front to date which hit around sunrise the following day.

The pair landed largemouth, drum, hybrid, and white bass (shown here).  The white bass in Jake’s left hand (red jacket) taped 14 1/8 inches — very nice for Belton Lake.

We boated a mix of short and keeper white bass and short and keeper hybrid, although the legal hybrid made up a small percentage of our catch (about 5 of the 115).  In our mix of fish we also picked up 2 largemoujth from out of 44 feet of water, and a single freshwater drum.

TALLY = 115 FISH, all caught and released

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 6:45a

End Time:  12:15p

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start:  49F

Water Surface Temp:  66-67F

Wind Speed & Direction:  S12 at sunrise, increasing to and leveling off at S17 by trip’s end

Sky Conditions: Cloudless, fair skies.

Other: GT=140

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area   1403/1223 downrigging early

**Area  187/1287 smoking

**Area 171/1290 smoking

**Area 1468/1463 smoking

**Area 1469 (most productive area and the last fished, smoking)

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

Salado, TX

www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

This evening I fished an after school SKIFF trip with the Apodaca family of Fort Hood.  This was the 21st SKIFF trip of the 2014 season.  SKIFF (Soldiers’ Kids Involved in Fishing Fun) trips are provided free of charge to families whose children are separated from a parent due to that parent’s military service thanks to the Austin Fly Fishers and a network of supportive individuals from all over the U.S.  All it takes is a phone call from a parent to me at 254-368-7411 to reserve a date.

(L to R) Katelynn and Maryjane pose with Maryjane’s 3.00 pound channel cat caught after a long white bass feeding spree — likely cleaning up the scraps on bottom left by the aggressive white bass.

Here, Katelynn (red vest) and Maryjane (blue vest) show our four best white bass with their mom, Denise, in the background.  Can you tell that Maryjane is not quite sure about having her thumb in that fish’s mouth?

Joining me for this trip was Mrs. Denise Apodaca, her 12-year-old daughter Maryjane Apodaca, and her eight-year-old daughter Katelynn Apodaca.  The girls’ father, U.S. Army Specialist Jesus Apodaca, is currently serving in the United States Army in Kuwait where he is supporting an Air Defense Artillery unit as a fuel handler on a one year tour. Specialist Apodaca has been in the Army for 4 years and has already served one previous year-long tour in Afghanistan with about a 1 year break in-between that deployment and this one.

We got on the water a bit later than we had hoped thanks to Friday afternoon Fort Hood traffic, but, as it turned out, the first part of the trip would be our slowest, with the fishing picking up well towards the middle of the trip and staying solid right until dark tonight.

Miss Katelynn had never caught a fish before, and Maryjane had only landed one catfish previous to this trip on a short excursion to the Rio Grande River with her grandmother. We fished three areas tonight. At our first stop, both game fish and the baitfish were rather sparse on sonar, but I saw enough to convince me that we should at least give downrigging a try for a short while.  I’m glad we did, as just three minutes after lowering the downrigger balls into the water, Katelynn came up with the first fish of her lifetime, a small white bass, earning her a TPWD “First Fish Award”. We gave up on this area rather quickly and went searching for greener pastures.

Upon arrival at the second area we checked with sonar, things looked a whole lot more promising. We were able to catch the majority of our fish at this location by vertical jigging with slabs and then cleaning up after the strong bite with downriggers over about a 2 hour span.  With 28 fish now landed and dark just 30 minutes away, we made one final move.

I sought out calm waters which the remaining light could penetrate more deeply, and we fished about 10 to 15 feet shallower in order to find fish that were still able to see our lures well. This turned out to be a good call as we were able to put 13 more fish in the boat in short order on a final twilight feed, including a few fish taken on slab worked vertically when we first arrived in this area.

Denise found out about the SKIFF program through my postings on Facebook about previous SKIFF trips. Denise is active in the Protestant Women of the Chapel (P.W.O.C.) on Fort Hood and was anxious to receive my electronic SKIFF brochure so she could let other ladies with deployed husbands know of what is offered through the SKIFF program. She was delighted with the experience, and found the entire outing very peaceful. She was obviously very happy for her girls.

We ended up the night with 41 fish including 1 freshwater drum, 1 three pound channel catfish, and 39 white bass.

TALLY = 41 FISH, all caught and released

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 4:30p

End Time:  8:05pm

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start:  83F

Water Surface Temp:  80.3

Wind Speed & Direction:  ESE8-9

Sky Conditions:  80% cloudy

Other: GT=0

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 1446 was the best producer, allowing for 3 “short hops” worth of vertical jigging.

**Area 1444 through 1445 kicked in an additional 13 fish at trip’s end, all after sunset.

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

Salado, TX

www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

On the morning of September 11th, I conducted the 19th SKIFF trip of the 2014 season by welcoming aboard siblings Carrolyn and Bubby Lascano .  SKIFF (Soldiers’ Kids Involved in Fishing Fun) trips are provided free of charge to families whose children are separated from a parent due to that parent’s military service thanks to the Austin Fly Fishers and a network of supportive individuals from all over the U.S.  All it takes is a phone call from a parent to me at 254-368-7411 to reserve a date.

Carrolyn Lascano, age 5, holds a nice Stillhouse channel catfish, while brother, Bubby (who is NOT fond of having his picture taken!), negotiates a package of string cheese.

Today’s trip really exemplifies what SKIFF is all about.  To understand why, you need to know a bit about the Lascano family.  Danny and Kacie (dad and mom) have two children, Carrolyn (5 years old) and Bubby (4 years old).  Danny is a Staff Sergeant in the U.S. Army, and, for the last 12 months he has been deployed to Kuwait with C Battery of the 1-44 Field Artillery.  It would be difficult enough doing life essentially as a single parent of a 4 & 5 year old, but, Kacie did more than that — she graciously navigated this time being a great mom to Carrolyn and to Bubby, who is autistic.  Raising an autistic child single-handedly takes an extra helping of patience and care and energy.  So, upon learning of Kacie’s situation, I offered to take the kids fishing to give Kacie a rest.

Upon hearing of my offer, Kacie had a plan — to take me up on this offer within days of Danny’s return to the States, so she could prepare the house for his return without the kids underfoot.  Today, that plan worked out wonderfully!  My wife, Rebecca, who is a registered nurse, came along with me on the SKIFF trip and actually picked up and dropped off Carrolyn and Bubby before and after the “on-the-water” portion of today’s big adventure took place.

This was all timed well, as Rebecca not only needed to get onto Fort Hood as the kids’ school day was ending, but was doing so on September 11th, when Fort Hood becomes more challenging to gain access to due to heightened security measures in place to thwart terrorism.

The pickup at 3:30p went off without a hitch, the kids boarded my boat at 4:15p, at 4:32p we landed the first of 41 fish the kids would catch today,  and at 4:46p Kacie got a text message from Rebecca with her kids holding fish and grinning (well, as much as Bubby, who doesn’t like having his photo taken, would grin!).   At 5:15p Bubby got fidgety in the confines of the boat, so, he and Mrs. Rebecca went “shoreline exploring” while Carrolyn and I stayed hard after the very cooperative white bass.  By 6:45 Bubby was getting worn out and the novelty of catching fish had run its course for Carrolyn.  We headed back to shore and, long story short, Mrs. Rebecca delivered them safe and sound to their now-tidy home for their normal 7:30p bedtime.

Along the way, both kids landed the very first fish of their lifetimes, so, each will be receiving a TPWD “First Fish Award” through Mr. Ron Smith at TPWD who very capably manages that program.

Kacie was so happy for her kids and so appreciative for the little bit of downtime!

This, to me, is what SKIFF is all about … letting our soldier’s know they are appreciated, offering an opportunity and a respite for the spouses left behind, and introducing kids to what can be the pursuit of a lifetime while so doing!!

My hat is off to all of the Friends of SKIFF and the Austin Fly Fishers for being the engine behind all of this!

TALLY = 41 FISH, all caught and released

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 3;30p

End Time:  7:30pm

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start:  91F

Water Surface Temp:  86.1

Wind Speed & Direction:  NNE9-12

Sky Conditions:  40% clouds on a fair sky.

Other: GT=0

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area bounded by Areas 1440 to 1436 to 465 gave up every last fish we caught today

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

Salado, TX

www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

This morning I fished with my brother, Andy Maindelle, on Stillhouse.  He and his family live and work in NW Austin, so it was a short hop to the boatramp to link up at 7:15a to see what we could stir up.

My brother, Andy Maindelle, with a nice pair of white bass taken off bottom in 28 feet of water on bladebaits.

And a nice pair of largemouth taken on topwater.  In the very clear water, fast, accurate casts and a super fast retrieve was necessary to fool these fish consistently.  We boated 11 schoolie largemouth this morning, all taken on topwater.

I had two “agendas” today, aside from putting Andy on some fish.  First, was doing some “recon” for a SKIFF trip later today with a 4 & 5 year old from Fort Hood.  The second was experimenting with a 4-armed umbrella rig (my standard setup this summer has been with a 3-armed rig).

Things were pretty subdued this morning, overall.  We had fairly clear skies, a light breeze, but, the big news was the season’s first cold front slowly approaching our area.  Many times when these mild early-autumn fronts come down slowly you get a “calm before the storm” effect before the wind shift, and I think we saw a bit of that today.  There was next to no topwater action, and what action we found was pretty short-lived.  Also, on a number of occasions when we found good schools of white bass suspended off bottom and ran our downriggers through them, they failed to respond more times than not in scenarios which, under normal circumstances would have been a “gimme” to get a bite.

We put together a pretty decent string regardless, catching 11 largemouth bass (every single on on topwater with some explosive strikes!), and 33 white bass on a combination of downrigging and using bladebaits.  Our most productive time of the morning was our final hour when the winds turned westerly and began to ripple the surface after tapering off to near calm coming from the south.  During this time we landed a majority of our largemouth and the catch rate on white bass spiked significantly, as well.

As for the “agendas”, the last area we hit would be the first area I took the kids to later this day, and it would produce another 41 fish in just 2.5 hours of fishing, so, that was a huge success and well-worth the time invested this morning.  As for the 4-armed umbrella rig — not so much.  I found the rig tangled much worse than a 3-armed rig when a hooked fish was brought out of the water and was being unhooked — so much so that it reduced efficiency. And, we only landed one fish at a time on this rig anyway, whereas the purpose of the 4th arm was to enhance multiple hookups.  Hey, you don’t know if you don’t try!!

TALLY = 44 FISH

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 7:15am

End Time:  12:15pm

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start:  79F

Water Surface Temp:  84.0F

Wind Speed & Direction:

Sky Conditions:

Other: GT=0

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 1437-1438 light action on downriggers and Cicadas to start the day

**Area  671 light topwater action by schoolie largemouth led the way to catching 3 largemouth on topwater and finding schooled whites in the same vicinity on bottom

**Area 1255 minimal success on downriggers — saw lots of fish but could not get them to chase and commit — possible small, young of the year fish

**Area 1436 to 465 best action came at midday today.  Lots of bait, white bass, and largemouth in a confined area.  Caught fish downrigging, throwing blades, and on topwater

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

Salado, TX

www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com