White Bass: A Fishing Guide's SaviorBy Steve Welch Although I am known mostly as a crappie guide, I take time each summer to cash in on the fantastic white bass fishing we have at Lake Shelbyville. There is a 10-inch length limit for crappies and during summer the larger crappies leave the shallows to suspend in deep water, making them hard to find. I can catch a ton of fish just shy of ten inches, but that won’t put anything in the cooler for my clients. That’s when the white bass comes in to play. They have no creel or size limit because they multiply so rapidly that we must keep them in check. My guide trips during the summer months usually result in more than 100 fish boated each day. The white bass are roaming at this time. They are eating machines and hot weather just cranks them up. Other species become somewhat dormant, but not white bass. White bass, pound-for-pound, have to be one of the hardest fighters you will tie into. I encourage my clients to bring a child. They will be hooked for life with tons of action and they can fish my drop-shot rig with ease. White bass are roamers and to be successful at catching them you need to understand how they feed. They herd baitfish up into balls and attack them with a vengeance. Wind is the key to finding them on shallow flats, but they will be up on a flat one day and gone the next. During mid-June, I am casting flats up on the north end of the lake hoping to get a walleye or two mixed in with the whites, since they tend to hang out together. I use blade baits for most white bass fishing, either a Gay Blade, a copycat called a Big Dude, or a Cicada. My other rig is a two-jig rig. It is a 1/8-ounce jig tied a foot above another jig. I use one twister-tail jig and one jig with a shad body. Both rigs are designed to cover water quickly, which is how you search a flat for feeding whites. I look for boat traffic coming out of marinas and for mud lines on the bank where there is high boat traffic. White bass and walleyes use this form of cover to ambush their prey. During mid-July and all of August I move out to the deep drops on the river channel. Whites will suspend in deep water right beside the drop-off. I put my boat over the deep channel and cast up onto the top of the drop-off, using a drop-shot rig tipped with a minnow. The ½-ounce weight gives you good feel of the bottom and the jig being tied two feet up the line will keep you from snagging on structure. I catch whites in June, but it is when they are deep during the hot months of mid-July and August that I really get them. I can go through 30 dozen minnows in a single day and catch 200 fish from a single school. Once we hit Labor Day, the nights start to cool and white bass once again go up the creeks like they do during spring. The Kaskaskia River area will have tons of fish and the crappies will move into the same areas. My combo trips in September and October are a blast, since there are no boats and tons of fish. We will launch in the mouth of the river and fish there all day, where there are no big ski boats or jet skis to bother you. We get into the biggest whites of the year during the fall and that is the same area where the lake record of more than four pounds was caught. Like I said at the top of this article, I am primarily a crappie fisherman and once we get into October that is all I am thinking about. I look forward to the fall and winter crappie fishing more than the spring. There’s no need for any cork poles, just three 10-foot, tight-line poles for my clients and me. My fall trips are easily my best producers and if so many of you weren’t hunters, I could show you how good the fishing is during this time of year. Steve Welch |