White Bass, Spring River

[Phil Lilley]

Man we caught the whites today on the Spring.

 

Paul and Martin Crews from Neosho.  We were in Paul's boat.  He's fished the Spring since he was a kid and he's old... my age.

 

We started at 7:30 a.m. in the rain and caught whites on our first casts.  We boated up about 5 miles to a group of docks/house docks on river right and started on the right side above a concrete ramp.  We were throwing either smoke/red flake or smoke or smoke/purple flake.  They were on the bottom and bit fairly light. 

 

We moved to the middle when it slowed after a few of hours.  After the sun came out, we got lazy and drifted around a bit, not trying real hard.  Ate a sandwich.

 

Martin tied on a fairly large curly tail brownish grub and threw it close to the left bank and caught a white.  He did it again.  Maybe this was a pattern?  I tried with my smoke grub- nothing.  Put on a motor oil swimming minnow and it was on.  We caught whites for the next 3 hours drifting down the bank, throwing within 6 feet of the edge and catching whites in may be 5 feet of water.

 

Others started fishing the bank and doing ok.  I saw 2 guys throwing rooster tails and another 2 guys throwing chartreuse curly tails.  The latter boat was doing fairly well.  The rooster guys I don't think caught many.  Both were anchored.  We did the best moving and working the bank.  Paul said to anchor usually meant the "kiss of death".

 

I would suggest... move around and change baits.  If something it's working, then change.  Don't expect your lure to all of a sudden be the fish's delight.  Changing colors often usually produces more fish, more bites.  The anchoring thing... hard to say.  But if you're not catching, then you should change something, or everything.

 

We saw lots of different kinds of people heading in- from families out enjoying a beautiful day to couples to fishing buddies.  Saw lots of different kinds of lures.  I wanted to stop and show everyone how to catch them--there are so many white bass in that system it's crazy!  We did tell one couple where to go and what to use.

 

[Wayne SW/MO]

Twin Bridges?