Has anyone caught whitebass through the ice?

I know many of you will wrinkle your noses when I say my favorite fish on the Miss. is the whitebass. Does anyone have any tips or tricks for finding them under the ice on the Miss. or its backwaters?

If you figure them out, please share. I love catching those fish. Personally, they are more fun than smallies. I’ve been able to find them in the winter though.

More fun than smallmouth?? “Unguard”!!!!LOL

hey all,

i was just talking about this the other day with my dad. i was asking about were to catch walleyes and he got into stories of how they couldn’t keep the white bass off there line long enough to get the jig down to the bottom. i believe it was over by madain rock. this was probably 10-20 years ago though. i don’t no if they still catch like that.

he said that catching through the ice was pretty fun but it was very difficult to get them to calmly come through that little hole. noramly when they got into a school of white bass they had to move the shack because they weren’t interested in catching them things, they wanted them walleye

We were just talking about this the other day too. It seems like the ice fishing White Bass numbers are down on the St Croix. A few years ago we would hammer them ice fishing and it was really a lot of fun. Now they are kind of sporadic. Our best luck on the St Croix has been up toward the NSP plant by the high lines and down towards Bayport/Hudson.

well guess what me and this guy from wabasha were talking about this too,,, about 7 years ago we use to have a perm shack out in the middle of lake pepin and we were catching whitties and sauger in the same holes,,,, we fished them right on the bottom like we do walleye’s… what we used for bait was the ole jigging rap and using just a bobber and a walleye minnow,,, we never got into many big schools of them so i dont know if the schools of whitebass suspended or what,,, well good luck

I guess that this is kind of what I expected. I’ve caught them through the ice on Big Green Lake and on Lake Poygan but not yet on any part of the Miss. I suppose that they would stay in the main channel over winter. Anyway, if anyone gets into them, I hope you will let us know.

i caught one in the wabasha marina once but it was the only one and i thought it was a pretty rare feat.

I hesitated to post this because it is with considerable shame and regret that I relate this story.Awhile ago now…I beleive it was the winter of 1986,I was ice-fishing on North Lake(pool 3)the first tuesday of December.I caught 36 BIG white bass(silver bass as we called them)as fast as you could get your line back in the water.Since I was after crappies,I did what everyone did in those days and just threw them out of the shack to freeze on the ice and left them there.They were all gone the next day so,I’m sure the eagles and crows ate well.I’ve not caught them like that since.White bass were alot like eelpout on Mille Lacs in those days,most people considered them not good for much and left them on the ice.Age has taught me the fun is in the catching,not the keeping of fish…be they silver bass,eelpout or dogfish.Hindsight being what it is,I regret all those wasted fish and now I return anything I don’t keep,back to the water.Hopefully,maybe there’s a lesson to be learned here for some other fisherman.Mike

Troutman,

Unfortunately many of us have done the same thing, maybe with those 3″ pesky perch. Our job now is to teach the proper ethics to the younger generation so the same mistakes aren’t made twice. I can remember catching about 40 silvers one summer, kept putting them on a stringer. When I got back to the campground, dad handed me a knife and said if you keep it, you clean it. Well, I never kept that many fish again. Everyone makes mistakes, let’s try and educate others so they don’t have to make the same ones we did.

Buzzer sent me a PM the other day and he caught about 25 nice ones through the ice down by Prairie du Chien. Some were in the 2lb range. If you’re out there Buzzer give us some info on the tactics and water areas you were fishing. Provided it is not an ancient family secret.

Deep water sand bottoms and jigging raps about a foot of the bottom no current 35 foot of water # 3 and # 5 jigging raps brite colors Very fun extreamly aggresive.

My question is what size white bass would be considered a trophy Im thinking that I would like to mount one. Give me your Input

I would have to say anything over 20″ would be a nice one. I fish them alot and have yet to catch one over 20. Been close a few times. I have not heard of any stories with stripers over 20 come to think of it.

a 20″ striper would be a monster… they are trophy sized over 18″… that size is tough… anything approaching 19 is very difficult to find… my best spot for truly trophy stripers is the wingdams on the river south of Pepin… Ive caught more LARGE stripers there than anywhere else Ive fished…

I catch many of these critters throughout the season on the river. A 17″ white bass is big, anything over the 18″ mark is huge for a white bass.

Hey Ken, thats where I usually fish for stripers also, plus the riprap. Give me a wave if you ever see me. 16ft. blue Lund Pro-V tiller with a 60hp Suzuki.

Here is a link to a pic of one of the stripers we got into on Sunday.
http://groups.msn.com/HardcoreFishing/shoebox.msnw?action=ShowPhoto&PhotoID=160

We caught about 20 whites most ran between 16-18 inches. Our intentions for the day was to find some nice backwaters crappies, which we also caught, but it was a nice suprise to hook into the whites. Man can they ever pull and are hard to get started through the hole.

I am definately gonna see if they are still there this weekend!

~~~~~~~~alkfish

That is a nice fish . May I ask what you have been catching them on Ive been using jiging raps mostly # 5 tioed with a wax worm have you tried live bait rigs yet I paln on trying that is weekend .

I caught most of them on a 1/4 ounce buckshot spoon from northland. They just smoked it when I would shake it. Also a #2 blue/chrome jigging rap caught fish(with or without a minnow head on em. If you use jigging raps make sure to up size your hooks a bit. The hooks they come with are too small for my taste.

I hope you find em this weekend!

~~~~~~~~alkfish

In reply to:

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My question is what size white bass would be considered a trophy Im thinking that I would like to mount one. Give me your Input

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First off i’d say to keep the dorsal fin folded flat,no need getting jabbed in the man grapes trying to mount a silly fish!

Second,I see some are referring to stripers,white bass,and some to both in the same post.From what I can find and tell the particular fish in question here is a white bass.Very prolific,agressive,and fun to catch.Seems the average size is about 2 lbs.A striper is a saltwater species capable of reaching 75lbs or more.Is there a species of striper that raoms the Mississippi as well?

well… not to get cute.. but white bass is a species of striper…. they are all in the same family and can interbreed and produce hybrids…. if there are true striped bass or hybrids in the miss they have been stocked…. Ive not run across any… but there are rivers that flow into the miss that have hybrids….. and maybe even purebred stripers…

We have a lot of “wipers” down here on our end of the mississippi. It’s a cross between the natural occuring white bass and a striper. Grow fast, grow big and good fight. I think they were from a stocking program associated with the Cordova Power Plant in the Quad Cities many years ago. I used to catch them now and then in my hoop nets when I still comercial fished and some of them went over 4 lbs. Largest for me on pole and line was a little over 3 lbs.