This morning I ran a white bass fishing trip for returning guests Richard H. and his son, Alec. Joining the pair were father and son, Mark and Thomas, on “holiday” from the Manchester region of England. Only the two boys (Alec and Thomas) were fishing as the dads had a bit of a reunion.

Alec fooled this 20 7/8 inch, 5.00 pound largemouth with his TNT 180 slab. This fish was “ghosting” a school of small white bass we’d located in 25 feet of water.

Thomas boated two at a time as we ran Reefrunner Rip Shads through shad-chasing schools of white bass this morning

The morning was warm, heavily overcast, and breezy with the S. wind at 12 before sunrise. Since Thomas had never been fishing before, we began very fundamentally by using a bream rod to catch small sunfish in shallow water (Area 456). We found a few green sunfish and bluegills here and managed to boat 8 which I held onto as live bait if the opportunity presented itself later in the trip.

Next, we set out to find white bass. Looked over a few deeper areas and gave it a go at one of them, but really didn’t see anything on sonar to get excited about. Often on dark mornings like this one, the deeper bite doesn’t get going until the skies brighten a bit. So, we decided to look a bit shallower.

As we searched around, I observed a blue heron dive multiple times over open water — a sure sign of schooling gamefish. We checked the action out and, in the heavy chop, could see small, briefly appearing schools of white bass feeding on shad on the surface. Since schooling fish in ~70F water tend to move quickly, we rigged up with a flatline trolling spread consisting of twin Reefrunner Rip Shad crankbaits and put them out at a set distance to keep them scuffing bottom from time to time. Over the next 90 minutes we boated 16 fish including 15 white bass and 1 largemouth. On our very first trolling pass, Thomas caught two fish on the same lure at the same time.

By around 10am, the skies had brightened just a bit and the novelty was wearing off the trolling approach, we we again searched deep water for large schools of white bass. At Area 546 I graphed some white bass holding fairly well-spread over an ~80′ diameter piece of bottom. I got us over the center of mass and coached the boys to help them keep their “smoking” technique consistent. They immediately were into fish and stayed in them for about 50 minutes during which time we boated 24 more fish, including 23 white bass and an outsized largemouth (see photo and caption above). We did hang some bait here but the white bass were worrying the sunfish to death before largemouth could zero in on them. We had one white bass mouth the bait without getting hooked and drop off right as Alec was bringing it out of the water, and had another white bass swallow the bait right to the base of the bait’s tail, despite using a circle hook.

Our last bit of success came between 11:25 and noon, right at Area 723. Again, I found white bass holding tightly to the bottom (thanks to StructureScan) and well-spread over a strip of bottom 70-90 feet long. The fish perked up quickly, but didn’t stay “jazzed” too long, as is typical towards midday. We worked in 18 more white bass here, all on TNT 180 slabs, before the bite went soft as the murk lifted and bright skies began to take over. And so ended our excursion today with a total of 66 fish to show for our efforts, not to mention two boys with very sore wrists!

A CURIOUS BIRD OBSERVATION…

On our last trip in late November of 2010, Richard caused quite a stir in the birding world after sighting a black-legged kittiwake (a tern-like bird) feeding on shad at Belton Lake as we fished for white bass. It seems bird oddities follow Richard around as today the boatful of us witnessed a mid-air duel between an osprey and an adult bald eagle. At first the eagle was the aggressor, pestering the osprey and trying to get the fish it had in its talons away from it. After several moments, and at an altitude of perhaps 400 feet, the eagle was successfull in causing the osprey to drop the fish (either a gizzard shad or white bass of about 10 inches in length). We watched the fish fall for several seconds, and hit the water with a big splash. Next, the eagle moved in and snatched the floating fish off the surface and flew off to the west with its stolen prize. We then watched the osprey, just 10 minutes later, make another successful grab at a white bass from out of a surfacing school of small fish. This time the bird headed to the closest dead tree and downed its meal before any bald bullies could find him.

TALLY = 66 FISH, all caught and released

TODAY’S CONDITIONS:

Start Time: 7:15a

End Time: 11:50a

Air Temp: 72F at trip’s start.

Water Surface Temp: ~68.5F

Wind: Winds were S12-14 the entire trip

Skies: we were heavily overcast until ~10a, then the cover slowly tapered to zero by noon