wohhooo white bass

Well in case you think the white bass spawn and run was over on the Mississippi they started hard again 2 days ago and today was unbelievable.. guide customers caught 100 Plus to day we kept 50 they caught and 8 I caught… lots of females jam packed with eggs… amd some empty plus lots of males… I will let the size speak for themselves when the pictures come when I fill up the roll of film. These two guys are from missouri and to quote them directly, ” If we had white bass like this in MO we would fish for them all the time. Actually bigger average fish weight for the 7 we put on a stinger and took a picture of than some bass tourney limits… for the five largest. You know when your with the right guys when the first egg belly you see the client says “let’s put the females with eggs back”!!!!! Amd males milting on us too… I’m confused weren’t they supposed to be don about 3 weeks ago?????

Sounds like a great day. White bass pull mighty hard must’ve been fun. I know you fish 9 a lot is that where you knocked them today? Great to see others employ the catch and release on the females even when you know they want some meat for the pan………

Lawrence, just wondering if the crawfish are hatching on the wingdams and in the shallows right now. I used to time my whitebass fishing with the crawfish hatch and get them by the dozens and big ones too. I opened up a few stomachs from the big ones and they were gorged with tiny crawfish and crappies about 1/4 to 3/8ths long, ever wonder where all the crappie fry go, this is one place. If you could find a wingdam that a good hatch was taking place and it wasen’t hard you’d find stripers in there by the dozens and even hundreds feeding on the new hatch of the year, its good to hear thier numbers are still high and healthy, thier one heck of a fun fish to catch and they hit like a freight train, especially the big ones.

Pool 9 is where were catching them… I didn’t do any of the cleaning… but the fish are spitting up emerald shiners and the guys that cleaned the fish said there were more in the stomach… so I don’t know if part of it was a crayfish buffet. The shiners are so thick sometimes when your hook comes back you have one on… just like the ST, Loius river in spring. The jumbos disappeared today so it it must be time to deposit some eggs.

The crawfish hatch has happened in the shallows already. I’m seeing the small crawfish and they are almost an inch long. I haven’t seen any larger ones carrying eggs for a while.

I was talking about jumbo white bass Blue.

And I was replying to the question posed by mossydan.

Customers kept two white bass yesterday and you were right Mossydan… pieces of emerald shiner and orange leftovers including one very tiny claw.

I just revisited this thread and seen what you guys wrote. I remember when i used to clean the whitbass i got they were full of crawfish and small crappies. i don’t remember seeing to many emerald shiners but full of crawfish and crappies. I remember seeing a few guys in the shallows with window screen nets on long poles going for small crawfish in the moss. They would work the net in and around the moss knocking off the small crawfish so i made a small net about 16″ square and i got them too. I remember this guy saying these tiny crawfish were about as good as it gets for bait for bluegills. I tried them on a no.4 aberdeen with a couple splitshot below the wingdams jigging slowly on the bottom and hammered the whitebass. I walked up on the wingdam and kicked over a few rocks and sure enough the small crawfish were under the rocks. I opened the stomachs of the whitebass and they were full of these tiny crawfish plus the small crappies but mostly crawfish. I don’t remember seeing big schools of emerald shiners so maybe thats why they were feeding on the small crappies, maybe if the emarld shiners and in good schools now the crappies won’t take such a beating and the crappie numbers will be up.