Limiting Out On Linesides
Finding White Bass
Editor’s Note: Catching white bass is relatively
simple because the fish are extremely aggressive –
eating many types of smaller fish, including  perch,
bluegills, crappie and gizzard shad besides feeding
on insects and crustaceans – and will hit a wide
variety of baits. The biggest problem involved in catching
white bass is finding the fish so anglers have a target
for their casting. Since populations of white bass fluctuate
from year to year because of the fragility of the eggs
and the requirement of nearly-perfect weather conditions
for hatching, the fishing is hot and cold. Although
the white bass can be harvested heavily without harming
the fishery, the fish successfully reproduce only every
three to four years in most areas.
Silhouetted against the first flames of an orange,
pre-dawn sky, my fishing companion sat perched in the
bow of the  boat
with the wind in his hair and his finger pointed skyward.
“The gulls! Look for the gulls! The gulls will
mark the spot where we’ll find the fish.”
As those words rang in my ears I remembered the same
words coming from the wooden-legged, blue-coated figure
of legendary Captain Ahab, stomping up and down the
deck of the Pequod, his weathered face searching for
gulls in his relentless pursuit of the white whale,
Moby Dick. Although the fish we sought were not white
whales, they were white bass and put up a whale of a
fight. White  bass,
which resemble small striped bass, often lurk unseen
in schools below the surface of the water. “Find
the gulls and you’ll discover white bass”
was a fishing lesson a friend of mine had told me many
years ago.
When Joe Price of Bessemer, Alabama and I spied a hovering
white cloud of gulls diving and capturing minnows, we
motored close to the feeding birds. I cast a white,
1/8-ounce bucktail jig with a chartreuse hair tail while
Joe threw a green and white Mann’s Little George,
an old bait that still catches plenty of fish. Before
the leaded lures crashed into the rocky bottom, the
line twitched, and I set the hook. The ultralight rod
dove downward to kiss the fast-moving current of the
m ighty
Tennessee River in North Alabama as the drag on my reel
shrieked goodbye to the 6-pound test line.
The white bass we angled for were not the usual ½-
to 1-½-pound top schoolers for which most sportsmen
fish. And as the lineside bass I had on my rod ran,
I realized just how strong a 2-½ to 3-pound fully-mature
white bass can be. The fish made four or five line-stealing
runs before he could be boated. The savagery with which
the white bass fights is one of the main reasons for
his gain in popularity with sportsmen in recent years.
In less than 20 minutes, Price and I had 20 white bass
in the boat. Then the action stopped. Evidently the
fish had moved. And once again our search had to begin.
TOMORROW: CATCHING WHITE BASS
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