Hillman Guide Service

[CaptSteve]

August 4th – Fished with Richard, Kyle and Steve today. We started out trout fishing then got side-tracked with a school of redfish. Ended up with a nice box of trout and reds. All were very solid! Bass Assassins thrown into slicks in 6 to 8 feet of water worked well.



August 5th - 10th – Family vacation in the Florida Keys. What a blast!

August 11th – Jake and I fished the Galveston Redfish Series. We worked open water schools and back lake schools to land 15 upper slot redfish and 4 oversized ones up to 42 inches. The two slots we weighed in totaled 15.29 pounds which put us in 13th place out of 60 teams. All of our fish (including the ones weighed in) were released in great shape. Bass Assassins and topwaters did the trick.



August 12th – Mitch and Marty had a decent morning landing 12 trout to 5 pounds by 10 AM before the southwest wind became unbearable. Assassins in Limetreuse and Red Shad while drifting slicks over shell got it done.

August 13th – Dave, Morris and Mike fished with me in a brutal WSW wind. We scraped up 5 big trout then decided to go redfishing to salvage our day. They ended up keeping their limits of slot reds along with one tagged oversized (28.5 inches). A rare flounder (on my boat anyway) found its way to the cooler also. Not a bad day at all considering the poor conditions. Several colors of Assassin Sea Shads fooled our fish.


August 14th – Clay, Travis and Billy were forced to fish for reds with the hard winds we had. The reds saved our day for sure with us hooking 22 redfish and landing 11 of them up to 31 inches. We also caught several specks with only one being a keeper (17 inches). All of the oversized reds were released. Clay handled a fishing rod about as good as any 12 year old I’ve ever seen. He caught his limit of reds plus the two biggest oversized ones. A variety of Assassins were used. It really didn’t matter when we got on the schools.


August 15th – Cancelled due to howling SW winds. A few other guides I spoke with only caught 2 or 3 keeper trout, so it was a good choice.

August 16th – Arthur, Arthur, Sr. and Gabriel got started fishing around 8:30 because the wind was cranking hard early. It finally subsided, but our tide was over so the trout bite was slow. I went and checked on one of the schools that Jake and I fished 6 days earlier and sure enough they were slicking. I had a really hard time finding where they were in all of the large slicks. After staying on the trolling motor for almost 30 minutes and never getting a bite I decided to crank up and move on. The instant I cranked the big motor the reds came to the surface like jackfish (about 150 yards from my boat). I motored upwind about 100 yards and eased in with the trolling motor. Once we were on the school we had quadruple hook ups. They had never seen anything like that so it was a lot of fun. All of our reds were in the slot ranging from 26.25 – 28 inches. Arthur, Jr. caught the 28 inch stud which weighed a tad over 8.75 pounds. Their total catch (keepers) for the day was 7 reds and 7 trout with the biggest trout measuring 24.5 inches. I sound like a broken record, but once again everything was caught on Assassins. It’s really hard for me to throw anything else.


August 17th – Haley and Kent pecked away at some very nice trout until they had their limit by 12:30. It was nice to get a day when the wind didn’t just rip the bay apart. Topwaters and Assassins over shell in 6 to 7 feet of water paid off. There were an unbelievable amount of slicks, but the bite wasn’t hot and heavy.


August 18th – Quinn, Nick, West and Bill were only able to fish for about 3 hours before severe storms and high winds forced us to the dock. They were still able to trick 14 very good trout to 24 inches. Quinn had the hot hand. He started out on the bow of the boat catching while the rest of us pretty much just watched. Eventually, West moved to the bow and Quinn moved to the center. It didn’t seem to matter. He could do no wrong. Sea Shad Assassins in Limetreuse worked slowly yielded the best results.


August 19th – Had to cancel because of very severe storms that lasted most of the day. Happy to get the rain though.

August 20th – I hosted the 1st (and hopefully to become Annual) Ryland Homes Tournament out of Topwater Grill in San Leon. The NW wind was a little stiff early, but the weather eventually got right around 10:30. All 9 of the boats were in around noon with good boxes of trout and reds. Each boat boxed 15 – 20 fish with the biggest trout weighing almost 6 pounds and the largest red coming in at 5.6 pounds. One of the guys also brought in a 20 inch flounder. Everyone had a great time and Topwater Grill did a superb job on the food (crawfish etouffee, fried shrimp, fried fish, hushpuppies and grilled vegetables) as always. The weigh-in was conducted by my good friend Bill Pandolph who is always spot on. All of the guides (Capt. Michael LaRue, Capt. Robby Mielsch, Capt. James Plaag, Capt. Fred George, Capt. Chris Jamail, Capt. Jason Brumley, Capt. Walt Kalinowsky and Capt. L.G. Boyd) worked their tails off to make sure everyone caught fish. All the fish were caught on soft plastics and topwaters.

August 21st – Customers cancelled at the last minute so I took the day off.