May 24th: The last of five tournaments on the Central Texas Fishers of Men Tournament Trail was held at Stillhouse Hollow Lake. All four of the ArmyBassAnglers teams weighed in with a five fish limit and said it was an extremely fun day and a fitting end to a rewarding season with the great members of the Fishers of Men organization.
Mike Garrett and Brent Homan had the best draw of the four teams. With 64 registered teams, they received the 41st starting position. They had experienced a great deal of success with some heavy sacks of fish on Stillhouse and were hoping for the same, even considering the relatively poor starting position. They received their first blessing of the day when they rounded the corner and did not see another competitor fishing at their first hole. Within half an hour, they had a limit of keepers in their new Skeeter ZX 225 thanks to a good top-water bite. Just as quickly, the “Pop-Rs” quit working and they moved to a deep ledge and started slinging deep driving crank baits with their Castaway Crank Bait rods. The first cast led to their first culled fish followed quickly by two more culls, but nothing huge, yet. Their third spot was a hump that rose out of deep water to about thirteen feet. They got the heavy Castaway flipping sticks out and caught two very good fish on J-Rod jigs. They continued working this spot for some time before heading back towards the launch area where they finished the day throwing Carolina rigs in 25 feet of water. Their five fish weighed a very respectable 13.86 pounds; good enough for 28th place.
Jarod Shelton and Al Pemberton chose to chase the larger fish in deeper water and initially threw top waters and Carolina rigs. Jarod changed tactics and was successful a short time later with watermelon flukes on mid-depth ridges and breaks. The fluke bite produced three keepers before 8:00. They detected several bites as the plastics were falling which usually means the tough suspended bite. An assortment of crank baits were used to unlock the suspended bite but the combination was unsuccessful. After spending some time trying to graph for and find fish with C-Rigs in some of the community holes, Al was able to catch his first keeper around 10:30 in flooded timber with a Yamamoto cut-tail Senko on a medium action Castaway worm rod. His second keeper also came on the Senko. Their five fish limit yielded a tough 7.84 pounds but they had an awesome day on Stillhouse with their new Skeeter ZX 225 powered by Yamaha.
With Cody in Iraq, Don Bailey had the blessing of being able to fish this event with his son, Chris. Don had only ever fished this lake once, at last May’s Fishers of Men event. So, after some advice based on the rest of team’s pre-fishing, they stayed fairly close to the launch site, near the dam. Starting shallow, they worked “Pop-Rs” on their Castaways and Don hauled in two fish on his first two casts. Unfortunately, neither would keep but he and Chris knew it would be a fun day. By 7:30 they had a limit in their Skeeter 20I and had caught at least 20 fish by 9:00. When the top-water bite went away, they moved deeper with Texas-rigged plastics. They were unable to cull any more fish and came to the scales with 10.39 pounds. When asked to reflect on the day, Don could only smile and say, “I’m fishing with my son and we caught a lot of top-water fish. It was a blast.”
Randy Sitz and Chad Nelson had high hopes for a good finish on their home lake. They were currently in 11th place in the points standing and were hoping to finish in the top ten for the year. They were a little worried after Friday night’s draw placed them as the 55th boat to launch. They were also still breaking in their new Yamaha powered Skeeter ZX 225 at 4000 RPMs. Like the others, they were blessed with a wide open first choice of fishing locations. Randy quickly boated a keeper on a splatter-back Bandit crank bait. Then the top water bite was on. Both Chad and Randy caught multiple solid fish using Yellow Magic and Pop-R top water baits. Randy was fighting the 20 MPH wind which made it difficult for him to do much more than stand on the trolling motor and concentrate on catching fish. It must have been comical to see Chad with a fish of his own in one hand reaching with the net in the other to land another of Randy’s fish. The team was working as a well-oiled machine as they caught fish after fish, many of which would cull smaller fish that made up the limit they had by 7:15. The top water bite was gone and they moved out to deeper water. Chad hooked up with a nice 4 to 5 pounder on a DD 22 but she came unglued when she jumped. Chad was upset to say the least and Randy tried to console him with a friendly jab about helping the team. Looking to cull a few smaller 2 pounders, the team went up the river and fished some trees in about 14 to 20 feet of water. Chad caught a nice 3 plus pounder on a Texas-rigged Senko that culled a smaller fish. Then Randy replaced a 2.2 pounder with a 2.7 pounder. The bite was really subtle on these fish in the trees. The team credits their Castaway rods for their sensitivity. The team would finish in 24th place with 14.52 pounds but exceeded their yearly goal of finishing in the top ten by tying for 7th. They both shared similar sentiments: “I am happy with our execution today. We worked well together in some tough fishing weather. It was a fun day on the water and the top-water bite was a blast. Just wish we could have caught some 5 or 6 pounders. We are stoked to have made the Top Ten...it was a goal we set at the beginning of the year.”
A special thanks to our Sponsors: Skeeter Performance Fishing Boats, Aggregate Haulers, FirstCommand (Killeen & San Antonio, Malibu Kayak Company, Images by Jay, Fox’s Pizza Den, First Continental Mortgage Company, Realty Executives (Leslie Diotte), Geneva Enterprises, Tri-County Photography, Returning Heroes Home, Pack & Mail Plus, CastAway Graphite Rods, LINE-X, JaROD Tackle LLC, and Sportsman’s Warehouse! We owe all our support to our sponsors and our families! Thanks so much. HOOAH!
