The River Run – When White Bass Make The Move

I’m not much of a cold weather person. Yes, I love watching college football on fall Saturdays, frying turkeys at Thanksgiving and of course Christmas with my family. But the gray, cold, short days depress me to no end. I continue the grind into January and pick up the shotgun a few times and brave the cold to stalk wood ducks, but even that doesn’t shake off my seasonal negativity. As January winds down and February begins, I find myself checking the ground around old home places. I’m looking for those first vibrant yellow blooms of the year: jonquils.

The first sighting gives me a renewed sense of hope, but it’s not what you’re thinking. Winter isn’t over. There’s a lot of cold weather left to come across the hills of northwest Georgia. Rather, it signifies that the white bass will run the rivers again, and soon. After the beautiful yellow blooms make their annual debut, I begin monitoring the water temperature in the reservoirs. The magic number is 52.

The author’s first sign that good fishing is coming are jonquils blooming.

White bass are of the temperate bass family. Smaller cousins of the striped bass, they are also known as sand bass and happen to be the state fish of Oklahoma. These stocky linesides are short, deep-bodied and commonly live in large schools. They have a beautiful, bluish-gray tint to their caudal, anal and soft dorsal fins. Every spring, they follow their instinct to reproduce, and the “run” begins. The fish swim from the deep water of the lakes where they’ve spent the winter and begin moving up the tributary rivers and streams to spawn.

In my neck of the woods, they’re always the first species to make the migration into the rivers, and they come in large numbers. The first waves come as soon as late February and no later than the second week of March. The fish tend to congregate around the mouths of creeks and in the soft water below shoals.

Like a brown bear waiting next to a waterfall on the Kenia Peninsula for spawning salmon, or a Nile crocodile stalking the muddy shallows ready to ambush an unexpecting wildebeest, I’m on my home river, waiting to intercept. I don’t have sharp teeth or claws. I’m armed only with a kayak, a medium-action spinning rod in my hand and an 11-year-old co-pilot in the front seat. We push upstream, both of us with cheeks red from the cold but with steely eyes of determination.

When we make it to our favorite spot, I carefully maneuver us out of the current, just upstream from a small creek mouth. This creek mouth offers the perfect habitat for these fish. At the mouth, where the creek meets the river, is a small area of slower, softer water that is a few feet deeper than the surrounding river. This creek mouth is my measuring stick for the run. If they’re here, the run is on. White bass aren’t exactly picky eaters. I almost exclusively use a 3-inch curly tail grub on 1/8-oz. jig head attached to a small spinner. I usually go with white or silver flake in color.

After I have the kayak out of the current, I make long casts to the far side of the creekmouth. I wait a bit before beginning my retrieve, to let the lure fall into the strike zone. Then I begin to reel. When it’s on, it’s not rare to break the skunk off the day on the first cast. As I bring my spinner through the slower pool, I feel that telltale jerk I’ve been waiting for all winter. If the run has started, we’ll have a cooler full of these stocky, linesides in no time. Action breeds action with this species. Once they start biting, they don’t stop. It’s not rare to have a limit (15 per person in Georgia) within the first hour on the water.

They aren’t as big as their esteemed cousin, the striped bass. Nor do they possess their brute strength and fighting power. But don’t sleep on the white bass. They have a scrappy, blue-collar fighting style that I’ll brave the cold to experience every year. They use their deep bodies to dig away from you and can put strain on a medium-action spinning rod, or 6 – and 7-weight fly rods. On fly, any light-colored, baitfish pattern will do the trick.

They aren’t exactly small either. Early in the run, I’ve found an abundance of row-bearing females as big as 17 inches and 3 pounds. On my home river, the Etowah, the white bass stay upriver until the end of May. As spring wears on, the pattern expands slightly, with fish hanging near blowdowns in deeper water just outside the current. I find fewer big fish, but good numbers remain in the river. In May, I enjoy the occasional mixed bag of white, striped and hybrid bass.

White bass are a fish to share. They’re not hard to find and easier to catch. If you want to teach a child to fish or entice a skeptical newcomer to the sport, look no further than the spring run. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen my son smile holding up a stringer full of white bass. It’s the kind of experience that draws people to the outdoors and offers an adventure that makes the novice want to see what else nature has to offer. Plus, white bass are tasty to eat.

There is something special about the timing of their annual run. Arriving toward the end of winter, but not yet spring, I feel a sense of renewal when I fillet my first mess in the backyard. The grass is still brown around me, but when I look down at those scales, I know a big step has been taken to end this winter, and the first big fish fry of the year isn’t far away.

Some treat them as lesser fish—the small lineside before the stripers arrive. I love striped bass, but I don’t look forward to them nearly as much as the white bass. White bass are the underdogs, and we all love a good underdog story. Give them a try and you’ll see that they’re worthy fish that simply bring people together, on the water and at the table.