White Bass Time

It’s funny what spring does to us. It never seems to treat us fishermen the way it ought to. We had a rough February here in the Ozarks, with so much snow and cold. I had hoped for good conditions for fishing long before March arrived, and that sometimes happens. I remember those times when the tail end of the second month of the year gave us some great fishing. It was tough this year because conditions gave us very cold water temperatures to contend with well into March.

If you know what you are doing, you can catch fish even in those conditions, but most of us want to have a day when we can fish without our ears and toes and fingers completely frozen with the effort. Finally we are there. It came later than usual. In years past I remember seeing those first yellow jonquils blooming up here on Lightnin’ Ridge by the third week in February. This year, the first one bloomed on the 15th of March.

As much as I prefer to go out and catch a big walleye this time of year, I know that I will have a great deal more fun catching white bass on topwater lures in the next few weeks, because there are so many more of them, and so much more action. We sort of let white bass take a back seat to everything else because they aren’t quite the game fish that walleye and bass are. And you just cannot make white bass taste like crappie and walleye. But everyone who fishes for them much knows that they are very good to eat if you filet them, and then go back over the filets with your knife to skim off all that thin layer of red meat, and remove the red line down the middle of the filet as well. It takes a little more time, but it is worth it.

I know that late and early in the day, on those same tributaries where white bass run, walleye are also lurking in a little deeper water below the shoals, and as I told you in another article a few weeks back, you can best catch them on those longer, deeper running lures, and jigs. If you want to improve your chances with those jigs, add a minnow to them, by passing the hook through the minnow’s mouth, out the gill and then through the back.

White bass are readily taken on road-runners and just plain jigs, but when you catch them on the little topwater lures that ruffle the surface and look like dying minnows, it is a great deal more fun. The only problem is, those early spring topwater fishing techniques that work so well on white bass won’t catch any walleyes. Every year, I have this nagging feeling that my pursuit of the white bass, which put up such a strong, hard fight in gently flowing water, keeps me from catching walleye or crappie that I might find somewhere else.

Looking for white bass all through April might indeed cost you some other fish, but when you find those big heavy females, which get up close to four pounds in some waters, you just forget about those light-hitting crappie. I always say to myself that I will get all the crappie I want in May, fishing at night under the lights. What I want more than anything is a well-bent rod and a fish that makes my drag whine a little.

There are always readers who want me to pinpoint good white bass fishing spots, and I don’t do that. Learn how to find them and there are a million places in the Ozarks where they will be. The last place I want to fish is in a crowd, so I forsake those spots that attract lots of fishermen, and find them where I can get some solitude.

One year a long time ago, my good friend Rich Abdoler and I were fishing in Arkansas on the Long Creek arm of Tablerock Lake right at the beginning of April. We went back up into a long cove where a small creek was gurgling and trickling in, something you could have jumped across. In the very end of the cove was a deep hole where we found some Kentucky bass eager to take our topwater lures. So we tied up to a snag along the bank and started fishing across that hole, catching one every now and then that would go 14 or 15 inches. The sun disappeared behind a ridge and tree frogs were singing all around us and it was nice and still and warm. And suddenly, white bass just moved in.  We started catching them, and they were huge, some of the biggest whites I have ever seen. We landed a couple dozen of them in the last hour there, and I’ll bet we caught six or eight that would have exceeded four pounds. On the light spinning tackle we changed to, those fish stripped line against the drag and felt like monsters out in that deep, dark pool.

So don’t wait for anyone to tell you where the white bass are, go out and find them where no one else is looking for them. And find a walleye or two. If you catch any big ones, don’t tell a soul where. But call me and tell me, and I’ll check it out and won’t tell a soul where it is!

On March the 19th we had the biggest and best grizzled old outdoorsman’s swap meet we have ever had, and I want to thank all you folks who read this column for coming. As always, when there are hundreds and hundreds of people coming by, it is hard to get to talk to everyone as much as I would like to. But we had a great day, and a great time, with the gymnasium packed all day. Tinker Helseth, the Canadian outfitter who joined us, gave away a free trip to his Lake of the Woods lodge. We had a drawing at 3:00 p.m. and a little girl drew out the name of David Ball from Brighton, Mo. She then drew the name of Larry Wecker from Topeka, Kansas, who won the beautiful smallmouth painting by Al Agnew.

We received 560 dollars in donations from the vendors and visitors, and I will add to that 480 dollars I received from the sale of my books and turkey calls that day, to make a total of 1,040 dollars which will be donated to two benefactors….  a local food bank to feed hungry people in this area, and also to the White Oak camp for underprivileged children, down near Alton, Missouri, which lost much of its funding this year. So we made some difference as well as having a great time, and we will try to do it again. I want to thank all the many people who helped make it possible, and the people of the Brighton Assembly of God Church and Mark Cross, their assistant pastor, without whom we couldn’t have even considered such a get-together.

I gave away a good number of our magazines, the Lightnin’ Ridge Outdoor Journal, which many of you are now familiar with. And now there are some ladies in the Ozarks who want to form a new magazine for Ozark women, and I promised I would help them get one started if possible, publishing it for them and staying as far away from the ‘putting it together’ as possible. They are meeting in Buffalo Missouri next Saturday, March the 26th, and if you have an interest in such a magazine, you might want to attend that.

To find out about the time and place, contact me. Call our offices at 417-777-5227.  My mailing address is Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613, or e-mail me at lightninridge @windstream.net. The website is www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com.