It was around midday on March 19 when Xuan Qi and his 11-year-old son, Brian, launched their Tracker bass boat on Stillhouse Hollow Lake. The two were fishing on the upper end of the reservoir, which covers 6,400 acres in east-central Texas. Using an electric motor, they were slowly trolling for white bass and crappies. Sometime around 2 p.m. a heavy fish hit Brian’s small white swimbait.
“Brian has been fishing since age five and loves it,” Xuan tells Outdoor Life. “He knows a good fish when it hits his lure. So, I stopped trolling while he fought the fish. Soon he brought it to the boat, and I netted it and brought it in.”
Xuan says it was the biggest black crappie that either of them had ever caught from the lake. Thinking it could be a lake record, they looked on the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department website and saw that the youth crappie record for Stillhouse Hollow was a 10.88-inch fish weighing less than a pound.
Xuan knew his son’s fish was bigger than that. So, he contacted Bob Maindelle, a local guide who runs Holding the Line Guide Service, and he asked him what steps they needed to take to submit a potential record.
Maindelle, who operates an official TPWD weigh station out of his garage, was happy to help the two fishermen. Meeting them at home, he first verified the species as a black crappie. Then, with his wife there as a witness, Maindelle measured the fish at 15 inches long and put it on his certified scale, which registered 1.75 pounds.
To complete the process, Maindelle helped the Qis navigate TPWD’s website and submit an online record application. Although the application is still pending, Brian’s fish should easily replace the current junior waterbody record.
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Xuan says that after finishing that process, they went right back to trolling and filling their cooler.
“We caught a total of eighteen crappies and a couple white bass,” Xuan says. “We filleted and ate all of them.”
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