Texas Classic Bass Club May Tournament on Stillhouse Hollow.

I fished the Texas Classic Bass Club May tournament on Stillhouse Hollow with Mike Amescua, 6:00 to 4:00 on Saturday. We got second place, and continued our string of fishing success this season. The combination of a front a few days a head of the tournament and a full moon with clear skies the night before the tournament made for some tough fishing conditions. The wind was calm and still early in the day, but picked up about 10:30 AM and blew at a steady 10 mph for the rest of the afternoon. Stillhouse will normally produce some nice stringers of bass this time of the year, but the big fish were not biting on Saturday.

The Tournament:

AT 5:00 AM I met Mike at the Wal-Mart in George Town. We loaded his gear in the boat and headed off to the lake and talked about our fishing strategy on the way. Mike commented about the full moon all night making for tough fishing. We arrived at the launch 10 minutes before start time, got launched and headed out at 6:05 AM. Running a little late, but not to much behind I decided to stop and fish the grass around the big island. I made two passes over an area known for producing big fish and neither of us even had a nibble. It wasn't light enough to navigate to the spot I really wanted to fish, so I decided to fish the brush around the island. The second or third cast I made into the brush produced our first keeper a little over 2 lbs. We pounded the brush with nothing else biting and decided to make a move.

We moved out on to the grass flats in 4 feet of water and went to work. There was some schooling going on and it seemed like all they would bite was a spinner bait. Mike tried a top water, rattle trap, and carolina rig, but couldn't resist using a spinner bait also when I kept catching bass. We put three bass just over 14 inches in the live well quickly and also caught several short fish when we decided we had plenty of time to get the fifth fish and went looking for bigger bass.

I moved the boat out of the grass flats into deeper water with stumps and trees where I picked up two more 2+ lb bass on my spinner bait. We culled out or first fish at 9:00 AM. With a solid catch in the live well we decided to start looking for the big fish. We moved up the lake to fish the area known as the swimming hole. By this time I would guess that area had been pounded, since there were other bass tournaments on the lake at the same time as ours, but we decided to give it a try. After a few passes with nothing but short fish, we decided to move on.

We moved up the lake to one of the islands near Dana Peak and made several passes down the side of the island where I've been told a 9 lb bass was caught. Well we didn't get a big one, but we did cull out another fish and caught a few more bass that wouldn't help the cause. I set the hook at one point and thought I had Moby on the line when it turned out I'd snagged a 100 yards of what I think was 50 lb mono with a carolina rig attached that was snagged on a tree. I managed to drag up the tree limb with my rod rigged with 17 lb Berkley Sensation. I got it off the bottom with part of the tree still attached and the broken line attached. This is the first time I've fished with Sensation line and so far I'm impressed with it's strength. It also doesn't have any line memory when it's wet, when it's wet. I have to stress the wet part, because after I spooled the reel, I decided to make a few practice casts in my front yard, bad idea. Every cast I made in the yard resulted in a back lash.

Back to the tournament, we decided to fish out in the middle of the lake with only a few hours left in the tournament. Mike directed me out to a spot he'd fished before and we caught several more small keepers that wouldn't help add weight to our catch so with 30 minutes left in the tournament we headed back to fish the marina. With 14 minutes left, Mike set the hook on our big bass 3.67 lbs. Never give up! That fish gave us the extra weight to push us into 2nd place. The first place team reported catching their big fish with only 5 minutes left to fish in the spot they were fishing. The bigger bite may have been turning on later in the day, because of the full moon.

Tournament in Review:

The sky was clear and sunny all day with the wind starting out calm and then blowing steady at 10 mph later in the day. We probably caught three limits of keepers, with a five bass total for 12.12 lbs. We caught about 25 bass all day long and had a great time. The majority of our fish were caught on white spinner baits. The big bass was caught on a brush hog.