Fished Your Lake Tonight. Mr. Babler Was Right.

[Bird Watcher]

I have a really good longtime friend who built a house in Owl Creek last Spring. He has been trying to get me to come down there for awhile now, but it just seems like I always have plans somewhere else, or he has a house full of family. Well, I called him this afternoon and he was just hanging around so I decided to head that way. I thought I might as well take the boat and we could sneak in a couple hours of fishing.

I had read Babler's report about all the white bass in the White River and thought that would be perfect thing to try out for a little bit. After a little bit of looking at a few inside channel bend roll offs, I still hadn't seen anything that looked like White Bass when I graph them over at Grand. I shouldn't have worried. Bill was right, if you keep looking you'll see them on the jump and you won't even have to guess. We found about 3 acres of them coming up just down from Big M and had a ball with them for about an hour. I even caught a keeper LM and a spot in with them.

It was a lot of fun and my buddy had a good time. It might be another year or two before I fish Table Rock again, but it was a fun evening. Thanks for the heads up, Bill.

[Bill Babler]

Chris, thanks a bunch for the report.

If you don't mind, could you tell us what method you used to catch-em. I know you folks that fish Grand, are experts with slab spoons. If you were fishing spoons, size, color and presentation, would help.

I'm getting lots of PM's about finding them but having a hard time getting them to bite. It is funny, the other day in front of beardsley branch, they were boiling 3 inch shad everywhere. I was throwing a minus 1 in shad and they were eating it up. My client was casting a jigging spoon that they had been eating and they just would not touch it. I gave him the cranker and I took the spoon and even I could not get them to bite it, until I started reeling it as fast as I could turn the crank.

Did find them at 25 ft. and vertical jigged to them with the spoon and the game was on. Just could not get the surface chasers to eat it.

Hate to use a multiple hooked bait, as it is just to dangerious, with all the flopping and head shaking.

Appreciate your participation, and if you would rather keep your methods to yourself, we fully understand.

[Bird Watcher]

Bill,

I didn't see the right signature on the graph for dropping baits last night, at least what I look for. I always look for thos classic "christmas tree" schools when I am going to drop down on white bass. I may not have been looking deep enough or maybe I was looking too deep. It seemed to me that the thermocline was sitting somewhere around 24', I think. I don't really remember. I was doing a lot of looking on the rolloffs between 22-29', but I wasn't seeing what I was looking for.

In the process of looking, all of the sudden the fish came up all around us. It was a classic spot, inside channel bend in about 12-18' FOW with 50' right next to it. Pretty simple presentation. 3" pearl sassy shad with 1/8 oz. jig head. You could also use a maribou, I just like the plastic. I like to jig it fast just under the surface while the whites are on top. Hold the rod tip at 11 o'clock and think like a shad that has been cut out of the school and is fleeing solo. When the fish go back down, I lower my rod tip down to about 4 or 5 o'clock and use a slow steady retrieve. Let the jig get down to about 7'-10' and just swim it. One other thing is, those fish like to hit the bait multiple times, especially when they are deep. don't set the hook until you feel your rod loading up. Often you will feel them "bump" it 3, 4, 5 times before they eat it.

BTW, Your Table Rock shad were skeeeny! The fish were yakking shad all over the boat. They were mostly 2-3"ers, so it might help to downscale your bait a little bit.

Longwinded enough for ya?