Sumo White Bass

Here is a huge white bass I caught on Pool 2 this afternoon. She hit a Oyster-shell Moxi pitched into about 1′ of water on a gravel point. 18″s and shaped like a diner plate. These fish sure are a blast where they have the feed bag on.

Just for reference we need to get a scale on some of those bigger whities.

The one in this pic is a tank! Thanks for posting, Mike. How was the walleye bite?

Yikes! That is a big old Bass Mike. Did your hat blow off?

Numbers where good today but the size was off. That wind was a bear to deal with today. Since Im in the Bass forum I did also catch 3 small mouth today. One was in with this White Bass. The other 2 where on a current seam coming off a point. All 3 where 14 to 16″s.

Thats a Doozy Mike!
I’ll never forget a White that was about to be filleted in the fish shack at Everts a few Aprils ago…we taped it at 20″!!!!
I have caught a couple 18″ers in my life so far…18″ is a trophy white in anyone’s book.

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That thing is a BEAST! I should really think about targeting those with light gear sometime, could be a blast.

Nice fish!

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I tried it on 2# test one time. Many times they would just break the line on the strike. Now 4# would be something. They put up a heck of a fight on 8#.

Nice fish Mike. Big whiteys are a blast and you don’t see 18”ers very often. We’ve got a few though this fall on the MN, and one that was probably pushing 20” (totally forgot to measure it but noticeably bigger than the 18’s).

Wow. That is a tank.

of course the angle of the dangle is a bit deceiving in that pic, but it might have been the biggest whitey I’ve seen in person.

Beauties Boys!

I ran into a school on pool 9 a couple weeks back. Biggest were just pushing 17″ long. Berkley digital varied between 1.75 lbs & 2 lbs. (I was a bit surprised by the poundage as I would have guessed 2 to 2 and half.) Out of the 10 I kept 6 were females with some egg development and 4 were males.

Wisconsin State Record 17.75″ with a weight of 4 lbs 6 oz caught back in 77′. I can’t even imagine a 4+lb true WB in WI ~ in Sept nevertheless.

One thing is for sure ~ pound for pound these are one of the toughest fighting fish on the ole Mississippi! The school I was on had shad pushed up on a shallow point. The bigger fish came out of about a foot of water. Smaller fish were out in a little deeper water ~ waiting for their elders to finish feeding I suppose

Very nice.
Some days they can be very distracting from the fish we are there to chase. I have had more than one fishing trip where they have saved the day as our targeted special didnt want to cooperate.

Heres a story from back in the late 70’s when I lived in LaCrosse. I was new to the area and was watching some older guys seining the moss in shallow water so I went and took a look. They were seining these little just hatched crawfish about 1/4″ long that were all over in the moss. The guys said they were the best bluegills bait you could find without a doubt. I came back later with a piece of window screen, coathanger and found a dried branch to make a seine. I caught a bunch of them and took them to a wingdam on the east side of Pettibone Island. I rigged up with a no. 6 Aberdeen hook and a couple splishot and threw out below the wingdam. I let it hit bottom and jigged it across the sand bottom and I got a solid hit.

I got it in after a careful fight on new 6lb. line and it was a huge whitbass. I threw back out and got another one the same size, then another. Believe it or not I filled a 5 gallon bucket with 6 fish and laid two over the top and took them to the truck. These whitbass were huge. I didn’t weigh or tape them out but when you held them up by the tail and head thier bellies sagged like big largemouths do. I know all of them were atleast 18″ and when I cleaned them they had a vein of fat on both sides that ran along thier bellies, these big whitebass were just huge and you had to watch what you were doing or they would have broke that new 6lb Triliene without a problem. Next to smallies pound for pound I think they are the hardest fighters in the Miss. Those big ones really put on a tug of war. I know all of those fish were over 4lb’s but thought nothing of record fish. One of the older guys at that time said the big ones generally run in seperate schools from the smaller ones.

I’ve gotten an occasionl big whiebass from time to time but I haven’t got into a big school like that since then. They sure do pull and make good runs.