WHO I FISHED WITH: This morning, Monday, August 8th, I fished with three young men, all age 11. This trip was in celebration of Lawson Phillips’ birthday. For this event he invited along his buddies Blaine Johnson and Harrison Fryar. Lawson’s dad, Will, came along as a non-fishing chaperone to help me help the boys be successful.

Whenever all anglers participating are under the age of 17, and adults are not also fishing, such trips are eligible for my “Kids Fish, Too!” rates. These trips normally go 3.5 hours versus 4+ hours for adult trips, and, they start at $195 for up to two kids. I don’t know of too many guided trips out there for that price point anymore — it is my way of trying to make guided fishing available to families and get kids engaged in the outdoors.

My next open date will be on August 23rd.

Here is how the fishing went …

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PHOTO CAPTION: From left: Harrison Fryar, Blaine Johnson, Mr. Will Phillips, and Lawson Phillips, with a portion of the boys’ 53 fish catch made as they celebrated Lawson’s 11th birthday with him.


WHERE WE FISHED: Stillhouse Hollow

WHEN WE FISHED: Monday, 08 August 2022

HOW WE FISHED:

Once again, our efforts early on were hindered by a lack of wind. We had nearly calm conditions through 9A, then the wind puffed on and off for another hour, finally becoming steady at ~6-8mph thereafter.

The fishing was tough under those calm conditions. We had no trouble finding fish, and the fish we found would even consolidate under the boat pretty well, but, we saw time and time again on Garmin LiveScope how they just sat idly by as we worked out baits, or, at best, just chased half-heartedly.

So, after picking up about 14 fish in our first hour, I utilized the downriggers for the first time in quite a while so as to cover ground and get multiple baits (3 baits on each of two rods, for a total of 6 baits) in front of more fish than we could by sitting still.

The downrigging definitely did the trick, allowing catches of singles, multiple doubles, and even one triple. It also allowed me to scrutinize side-imaging while having lines in the water. On several occasions, I spotted sizeable groups of fish which we Spot-Locked on and fished vertically for successfully.

The last of ~5 such episodes of this landed us on the morning’s best bite. From ~10:15 to 11:15, as the wind blew as hard and consistently as it would all morning, we took our fish count from 39 up to a final tally of 53 using MAL Dense Lures both vertically and horizontally.

I never stop a trip “by the clock” and so we wound up fishing a little longer than normal as I hated to stop in the middle of a cooperative bite, especially after we’d really had to work for ’em in the first half of the morning.

The final tally today was 53 fish, all of which were white bass, with only 1 short fish (under 10″) in our catch.

The smoking tactic we used is demonstrated here (skip to 2:26): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDSvfXgrAUE

The entire family of MAL Lures is found here: https://whitebasstools.com/

TALLY: 53 fish caught and released

OBSERVATIONS: Light early morning winds made for a much less aggressive early morning bite today.

WEATHER DATA:

Start Time: 6:50A

End Time: 11:15A

Air Temp. @ Trip’s Start: 77F

Elevation: 7.99 feet low, 0.05′ fall in last 24 hours, 1 CFS flow

Water Surface Temp: 83.8F

Wind Speed & Direction: S0-3 for the first 3 hours, slowly ramping up to S6-8 beginning around 9A

Sky Condition: Cloudless, pale blue skies

Moon Phase: Waxing gibbous moon at 82% illumination.

GT = 100

Wx SNAPSHOT:








AREAS FISHED WITH SUCCESS:

Area vic 863 – MAL Dense Lures smoked

Area vic SH0124C – Downrigging leading to working MAL Dense Lures smoked

Area 875 to 933 – Downrigging

Area 871 – MAL Dense Lures smoked



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

Nice post. Always love seeing the young ones taking part in fishing!