This morning I had a crew of four aboard for the 10th SKIFF trip of the 2014 season — Mrs. Elizabeth Turner, her oldest son, Jason (age 10), her middle son, Javier (age 9), and her youngest son, Jabari (age 6).  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: Justin (age 10), Elizabeth, and Jabari (age 6) with two nice hybrid from the same school that struck our downrigger rods just seconds apart.

Javier (age 9) and his mom with his biggest fish of day — a hybrid striped bass weighing just over 3 pounds.

Mrs. Turner heard about SKIFF through a posting on the Fort Hood Area Events Facebook page run by Denise Igo whose children I took out this past Thursday.  Mrs. Turner is a U.S. Army veteran and served a three year enlistment, including a tour to South Korea where she met her future husband, Jason Turner.  Sergeant Jason Turner is in the Army’s Chemical Corps and has been away for the last month training in California.  He’ll return shortly, only to depart again to go to an Army school which is necessary for him to advance to the next rank of Staff Sergeant.

The boys were excited to go fishing, to say the least.  Although they’d fished before with their grandpa down in Corpus Christi, they’d never been on a boat, so, that was a fun experience for them in and of itself.

Today’s fishing was a bit less productive than it has been for the past few days, and I attribute that mainly to very turbulent weather.  We got an area-wide rain at 4:15am, winds varied from near calm to near 20mph and had turned more easterly, skies were bright one minute and nearly dark the next, and it sprinkled on and off today for the entire four hour trip.  The fish I found were in the same places they have been for most of the week, but they just didn’t feed as long or as hard today.  The high winds no doubt dampened the excellent topwater bite we’ve had, as it made bait fish harder for gamefish to see and gamefish harder for me to see in the whitecapping chop.

Regardless, we caught fish fairly consistently from start to finish today.  We caught exactly 40 fish, including 6 legal (18+ inch long) hybrid striped bass and a mixture of 34 white bass and “short” hybrid.  Approximately 70% of our catch came on downriggers set between 12 and 25 feet, and the balance of our catch came on flatline trolled umbrella rigs fished in and around the few pods of topwater feeding fish we could find.

When all was said and done, each boy had caught at least one “keeper-sized” hybrid, and each boy had landed either a double or a triple (multiple fish landed on a single rod at the same time).

As I walked up the boatramp with the Turner’s headed back toward their family vehicle, Elizabeth was very thankful for the opportunity this SKIFF trip afforded her boys.  She assured me that SGT Turner’s phone would be “lit up” with messages from his sons about today’s trip.

TALLY = 40 Fish

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 6:25am

End Time: 10:25am

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 75F

Water Surface Temp: 81.8F

Wind Speed & Direction: ESE13-17

Sky Conditions: 100% heavily greyed over nearly the entire trip, with occasional sprinkles

Other: N/A

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 147 topwater at first light

**Area 845/1273 suspended white bass and mixed sizes of hybrid suspended at 21-25 feet

**Vicinity of Area 154 topwater and suspended fish high in water column (flatlined and downrigged)

**Vicinity of 847/831 fish in lower 1/3 of water column (downrigged)

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

Salado, TX

www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

Bob@HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

This morning I fished with 16-year-old Colton Cude of Killeen, Texas on the 9th 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.

Colton with 2 three-pound class hybrid striped bass taken on live bait on Belton this morning during a “break” from the more productive topwater bite that produced great numbers of smaller fish.

I first got to know Colton and his family through church about 6 years ago when Colton was 10 and his family was stationed at Fort Hood.  They “PCS’ed” (Army acronym for Permanent Change of Station) to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, and now have returned to Fort Hood.

Colton’s mom stayed behind at Fort Campbell to complete her nursing education, but looked me up soon after she rejoined the family here in Texas to see if I could spend some “guy time” with Colton.  When Colton’s dad, Staff Sergeant Elbert Cude came down for ’round-the-clock duty taking him away from home, we decided to put a date on the calendar and make this trip happen.

Colton is now going through some of the same things that I went through as the son of a soldier when I was his age –  being uprooted during the high school years, missing friends, discontinuity in school work and athletics, being pulled away from a girlfriend, experiencing how long-distance relationships work, wondering why you couldn’t be in a non-military family, and more.  And that’s all in addition to the usual teenage challenges of questioning authority, figuring out what you are going to be in life, etc.  So, we got to talk about all those things and more in between being interrupted by more fish than we could shake a stick at.

The topwater bite remained in high gear today with ample bait present, a new moon, manageable winds, and abundant grey cloud cover.  We threw “Cork Rigs” fitted with hand-tied flies designed to imitate the size of the bait I’ve been encountering and they have worked like a charm.  Although the fish are typically smallish, an occasional “ringer” spiced things up now and then.  The fish fed for a full four hours today.  We fished topwater for the first hour and the last two hours, and devoted one hour in between to fishing live bait specifically for hybrid striper.  We put a quick limit of 5 “keeper” (18+ inch) fish in the boat during this time and then went right back to topwater.

We ended the trip right at 10:30 (as that is the time mom’s taxi was due to arrive) with 103 fish landed, consisting entirely of white bass and hybrid stripers.

TALLY = 103 Fish

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TODAY’S CONDITIONS/NOTES:

Start Time: 6:30am

End Time: 10:30am

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 75F

Water Surface Temp: 80.2F

Wind Speed & Direction: SSE12-13

Sky Conditions: 100% Greyed over the entire trip

Other: N/A

AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

**Area 845 topwater at first light

**Area 1400 hybrid on live bait fished at 25-32 feet over a 45′ sloping bottom

**Vicinity of Area 103 – ample topwater action by white bass and juvenile hybrid

Bob Maindelle

Owner, Holding the Line Guide Service

254.368.7411 (call or text)

Salado, TX

www.HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

Bob@HoldingTheLineGuideService.com

This morning I ran the 8th SKIFF trip of the 2014 season.  Joining me were 12-year-old Cody McNeal and 10-year-old Cady McNeal.   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.

Although the majority of our catch taken on topwater consisted of smaller, “schoolie”-sized fish, Cody pulled this nice hybrid from beneath the melee on the surface using a large live bait.

Cady got this nice hybrid just moments after her brother’s fish took one of the live baits we were fishing down at 23′ over a 40′ bottom.

Cody and Cady’s stepdad, Staff Sergeant Lee Igo, has been away for over a month at an Army school in Fort Bliss, Texas (in El Paso) fulfilling requirements that will allow him to advance to Sergeant First Class.  The kids’ mom, Denise Igo, has been a huge help to the SKIFF program through her very well regarded Facebook page called “Fort Hood Area Events” which has over 24,000 likes.  She regularly reminds the community of the existence and purpose of SKIFF.

Fortunately, Cody and Cady were no fishing rookies.  Both could handle a spinning rod very comfortably and were able to cast with both good distance and good accuracy.  So, when opportunity knocked, they answered.

Based on the success I enjoyed yesterday on Belton Lake with another party, and seeing that today’s conditions were to be nearly identical, I felt we had a good shot at catching fish on topwater early and then downrigging later in the morning in the same areas where topwater action had occurred.

As we got going, no more than 10 minutes into the trip we spotted our first of many large schools of topwater feeding fish despite a fairly heavy chop on the water.  These schools consisted of a mix of white bass and small hybrid striped bass chasing mainly young of the year shad.  These shad are growing out well now that the water temperature is in the 80’s and food is abundant.

Long story short, we stayed on topwater fish and sight-cast to these fish for a solid 3 hours.  By 9:15am we’d boated over 120 fish on a Cork Rig with a shad imitator attached which closely matched forage size.  With about an hour left to go, I offered the kids some options, as I had come prepared to downrig as well as to fish with live baits.  I told them we could continue fishing with topwater and likely have a shot at breaking the long-standing SKIFF record catch of 147 fish set by Chase, Sean, and Trent Salyer on the 29th of January 2011, or, we could do some downrigging and/or live bait fishing for variety’s sake.  I made it clear that these methods would likely not be as productive as the topwater action had been.

The siblings agreed to try to catch one more fish each on topwater, and then to give downrigging a try.  We were pleasantly surprised as we began downrigging with balls set to 12 and 25 feet, that each time a rod went off, we brought in doubles (2 fish at at time)!  So now downrigging was outproducing the topwater bite, and the 147 fish mark looked very attainable.  As our fish count crept into the 130’s, I again offered variety in the form of fishing with live bait for some larger-sized hybrid.  The kids were good with giving that a try, too.

As our baits went down (4 rods), 3 of them got hit and up came with some very nice 3 pound category hybrid stripers.  We were now at around 140 fish.  As we scrambled to rebait our lines, and now sensing the record really could fall, we got our baits set down to the 23 foot mark where sonar showed the hybrid to be.  Just as we got the lines all set, a school of white bass and small hybrid began to feed on the surface, enveloping our boat in the frenzy.  I told the kids to grab the topwater rods and go for the record.  They brought in fish after fish from this cooperative school until my “clicker” read 153 fish at our pre-determined end time of 10:15am.  The record of 147 fish had been broken and replaced by a new record of 153 fish on a 4-hour SKIFF trip!!  Very exciting!

This morning I fished with perennial guests Dr. David Butler and his boys, Jack (age 14) and Jay (age 12).  David is a career dermatologist who got his start as an Army doctor, and now, as a civilian, is once again serving (veteran) soldiers through his work at the Veterans’ Administration hospital system.

David set the example for the boys by landing the first legal-sized hybrid of our trip.

12-year-old Jay then landed this nice 3 pound hybrid on a downrigged Pet Spoon.

And before all was said and done, Jack chipped in with a hybrid of his own.