Early after ice-out in North Country lakes, white bass school up and invade the shallows. Patterns are wind-driven, and wherever the water is warming up, white bass will be there. Unlike crappies, bluegills, and other warmwater lake-dwelling fish, white bass do not seem to stage near spawning areas early, or follow ancestral paths. When the wind changes direction, whites move, and do not seem averse to crossing the lake to take advantage of warming shallows on the other side—if the lake is no more than a few miles across, that is.

White bass that run into rivers from reservoirs in the South tend to “stage” (though that description is debatable) in deep holes in the lower sections of the river, or in the beginnings of the channel at the top of the lake, and may inhabit these areas all winter. White bass spawn in spring, and the spawn generally peaks as water temperatures approach 58°F. Sexually mature fish form schools and move onto shoals, into estuary areas, or into rivers to spawn. Most spawning activity, throughout the range of white bass, occurs in water temperatures between 55°F and 60°F. But long before that a gradual buildup to a spring feeding bender begins, and that’s what the whitey run is all about.

The Oklahoma Run

Gary Dollahon, a fishing-industry pro and sales rep for many years, has a passion for white bass and chases them often in the waters near his home in Oklahoma. “The white-bass run begins in very early spring down here, especially in impoundments that have a flow of water coming in,” Dollahon says. “It doesn’t have to be much of a flow. In lakes like Tenkiller, Broken Bow, and Fort Gibson, most white bass move into current to do their spawning. They don’t have to spawn in current, but often do.

“Everybody starts looking for whites in March, but April is the most consistent month. On Lake Tenkiller, the Horseshoe Bend is famous. It becomes a camper city when word gets out that the white-bass run is on. Day length and rising water temperatures trigger the runs, but rain and rising flow muddy the water and actually set a run back.”

Dollahon begins fishing during winter, looking for the vanguard of the run. “I start looking in the deepest part of the river channel, just above the reservoir,” he says. “I start with a spoon, in winter. You can have a lot of success in water 15 to 25 feet deep at this point. I use 1/2- to 3/4-ounce flatsided spoons, and I’ve been making my own. You get more flutter and a subtle fall. I fish spoons near bottom. The motion is like playing with a yo-yo. Just as a yo-yo or a jigging spoon hits the end of the string, you give the wrist a forward pop upwards. When you time it right you’re only moving the bait about 12 inches, but still producing a pronounced action.

“As the water just begins to warm above the average range for winter, I start fishing in 6 to 12 feet of water. In that very early stage of the run, I often use 2- and 3-inch grubs on 1/8- to 1/4- ounce jigheads, with 6- to 8-pound line on spinning gear. Depending on the current, I begin casting or quartering upstream, letting the jig drop some, then retrieving it steadily at a slow pace. Most of the fish are still bottom-oriented at this point.

“When they really start to get active, as water temperatures broach 50°F just before the spawn, the action is faster,” Dollahon says. “The bite is still concentrated in 6 to 12 feet of water, but now I might use a shallow-running crank, like a #5 Rapala Shad Rap. It’s a great spring bait because it resembles a shad, you can move it fast, take the most active fish, and cover ground. The rivers hold thousands and thousands of fish at this point, and just plucking the most active ones can still result in 100-fish days. When that’s going on, you can fish almost the entire river, but a protected eddy is always a good place to start.

“Down here, a 3-pound white bass is considered a good fish,” he continues. “A 5-pounder is pretty rare. Tenkiller, Grand Lake, Fort Gibson, Lake Eufala, and Lake Hudson are the best white bass lakes in Oklahoma, as a general rule. You want the water running and you have to call the dams for release schedules (which every guide knows). A good day on those lakes, during the heat of the run, is 100 to 200 fish per boat per day, with bass averaging 1.5 pounds or more.”

The Kansas Run

Just one state north the run starts a week or two later, but location is much the same. In-Fisherman Field Editor Ned Kehde, who has a soft spot for whites, also starts hunting them during winter, when conditions allow. “We’ve found white bass concentrated in several deep holes in the rivers above several of our northeastern Kansas reservoirs as early as March 2,” he says. “When all is well in the piscatorial world, we can catch 101 in about three hours. That’s our magic number, our goal, from late winter into early spring.

“These holes are 10 to 15 feet deep. Some say that white bass concentrated in these holes in March and early April are staging, but we don’t have any evidence to support that notion. In other words, the white bass are merely there, and we catch them, but we don’t know what their motivations are for being there. It could be that these areas have the best invertebrate populations, which the white bass forage upon heavily in March and April.

“We cast 1/16-ounce jigs with 2- or 3-inch action-tail grubs in white or chartreuse to the shoreline and slowly swim them back to the boat,” Kehde says. “Red jigs generally produce best. We also use a 1/16-ounce silver-gray jig that consists of a chrome head, silver tinsel body, and silver-gray marabou tail. White-blue-white is another good combo in Kansas. I mention it only because color can sometimes be critical with white bass.

“Normally, they move out of these holes to their river spawning areas in mid-April, sometimes a little earlier or later. Spawning usually peaks when the water temperatures reach the upper 50°F range, but often continues until the water is slightly over 60°F. I still don’t know if moon phases affect the spawn.

“In three of the reservoirs closest to me, we think a lot of the white bass reside in primary feeder rivers year-round,” he says. “But for the past five years the white bass population (at least our catches of white bass) in these rivers has been down. Consequently, our prespawn and postspawn fishing in the rivers hasn’t been as good as it was in 2000, and we can’t make our goal of catching and releasing 101 white bass in three hours.” (We think that Kansas needs to place a 5-fish limit on white bass but, the fisheries folks think that’s a cockeyed idea.)

“At times, when the river and lake levels are right, a good number of white bass leave the main body of the reservoir and move up the rivers to spawn, but our knowledge about this phenomenon isn’t based on any hard evidence. Few studies have been done. But we do know that in John Redmond Lake a significant number of main-lake white bass attempt to travel up the Neosho River during the spawning season. Many of them are stopped by a massive annual logjam that blocks the entrance to the river, and we think that many of Redmond’s white bass spawn around that logjam as a result.

“When white bass in northeastern Kansas spawn in the river, it’s in current around rocky riffles or riffles created by logjams or some kind of current break,” Kehde confirms. “More and more of our white bass seem to be lake spawners that use rocky shorelines. Favorite spawning sites on the main body of all these reservoirs include riprap causeways, jetties, and dams.

“Nowadays, we spend most of our April and early May outings pursuing the main-lake populations, and normally their actual spawning rituals take place before Mother’s Day. Traditionally, May 5 is a great time to find some heavy-duty spawning action on the main body of the reservoirs of northeastern Kansas. We don’t know if they actually feed during the heat of their spawning rituals. Piscatorial lore says that they don’t, but we’ve caught scores of female and male white bass releasing eggs and milt while we fished the main-lake spawning sites.

“In the rivers and on the main bodies of the reservoirs, we ply the shorelines during the run,” Kehde says. “To wield the light jigs I described, we use medium-action spinning tackle spooled with a lightweight (6- to 8-pound) braided line and a 5-foot fluorocarbon leader, attached by either a J-knot or a Seaguar knot. We use the same jigs on the main lake that we use in the river. When the wind blows, however, we sometimes have to use 1/4-ounce Blakemore Road Runners, Cotton Cordell Spots, Gay Blades, and Worden Rooster Tails.

“In Kansas waterways, chartreuse is the most productive color. When using a jig, a slow and steady retrieve is allowing the jig to glide and swim as if it’s in a suspended state—at times, occasionally creating a delicate triple twitch [similar to working a jerkbait in cold water for largemouth bass] as the jig slowly swims or glides along and tempts a white bass to strike. This twitch is also similar to the way we twitch a jigworm in cold water; a series of delicate S-curves radiate along the line from the rod tip to the lake’s surface.

“When using the 1/4-ounce lures, the retrieve is quicker than that of the jig, perhaps because the wind forces an angler to fish faster, but a slow-to-moderate retrieve is best. And like the delicate twitch of the jig, a periodic pause in the retrieve or a significant pop of the rod tip with your wrist pays substantial dividends on some outings.

“Windswept shorelines can be key,” Kehde says, “as white bass are following forage fish that stay in contact with the warmest water possible. A windsock is often necessary. It allows us to move slowly along a shoreline, being propelled by the wind, and we also control the boat with the bowmounted electric trolling motor. Moving slowly with the wind also keeps the bow out of our lines, which otherwise would prevent us from executing a proper retrieve. Moreover, when we deploy a windsock, we can often use a small jig rather than a 1/4-ounce Road Runner, Rooster Tail, Gay Blade, or Spot. Often a small jig is a much better lure than a 1/4-ounce lure.”

Farther North

Some of the biggest white bass (also called “silvers”) in northern states persist in the lakes of the Dakotas, in the Winnipeg River of Manitoba, in select portions of the Great Lakes, and in the Mississippi River. Joe Jackson, a Clam Corporation employee, is a white-bass enthusiast from Minnesota who primarily works the Mississippi River in and around the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul.

“Before the run, white bass are hunkered down in wintering holes in the pools and in the main channel of the river. We catch them through the ice all winter using jigging spoons like the Acme Kastmaster, the Hopkins Smoothie, or the Northland Buck-Shot Rattle Spoon on 4-pound mono in pools 25 to 28 feet deep.

“Right at ice-out, which generally takes place around the middle of April, white bass are already starting to move into shallower water. As soon as the water starts to warm into the high 40°F range, ‘silvers’ respond pretty well, but become most active after the water broaches 50°F, which generally happens in May. White bass spawn in late May up here, most years.

“In the Mississippi, current is more of a factor than wind in determining location,” Jackson says. “In lakes, wind-drive patterns often rule because baitfish follow the wind. But the shad ultimately determine location. When the water hits 50°F, shad and other baitfish start moving around and white bass follow. At that point, I’m a junkie for crankbaits. Rat-L-Traps and other fast-moving baits that cast a mile can cover a lot of water fast. They’re feeding up, during the run, which is actually a prespawn peak, and it all begins at that magic 50°F mark.

“Another good bait is the new smaller version of the Rapala X-Rap. White bass are one of the first fish of the year to react to a topwater, too. When they’re hitting a Heddon Zara Puppy up here, it doesn’t get any better than that, and whites start ripping topwaters in the 40°F range, making it another great way to locate a school.

“You have to hunt for them a bit because the shad are always moving. Just watch the surface, looking for baitfish activity. When the river hits 50°F, the hunt is mostly on shallow flats, starting at 8 feet and searching right up to the bank. When the river floods, white bass go right into the trees, where it’s tough to get a lure to them. But high muddy water doesn’t slow the bite up here at all.

“I use both baitcasting and spinning tackle with 8-pound-test mono,” Jackson says. “You could use much lighter line, but I don’t because I hate retying. You could get away with 10-pound, actually. White bass don’t seem to be line-shy. Whites are so easy, you can catch just as many on a flyrod as on anything else. Poppers and streamers are just as effective as cranks and other topwaters.

“The fishing from the Ford Dam down to Hastings, Minnesota, is phenomenal. White bass are big, here. A 3-pounder is pretty common, and 19-inchers happen every so often. Few people target them, because the walleyes are so huge and numerous on the Mississippi. A good day is 75 white bass. I know that’s an understatement, but I don’t want to exaggerate. Even a 50-fish day is one heck of a good time.

“And you’re going to be sporting scars. Silvers are the hardest fish anywhere to unhook without getting cut. They’re like smallmouths, only more aggressive. If white bass jumped, they’d be the most prized fighter in freshwater. They don’t ever give up.”