White Bass

[gregsayers2000]

Can any of you fine ladies or gents enlighten me on catching fall white bass in streams? Best bait, presentation and structure/depth. Any thing to help guide me a little would be real nice and helpful. I used to catch them off a pier in Lake Erie but never anywhere else unless by accident. Thanks to any and all.

[Linebacker]

We used to target them in the fall back when I was stationed in Mississippi. It's been over ten years but we would slay them on floating chrome rattle traps. We would find a feeding school and try and cast beyond them and run the trap as fast as we could into the school and just stop it and let it float back up and they would nail it several times we would catch two at a time on the same rattle trap. We also caught them on bucktail jigs cast into the school and regular rattle traps along with pop R's, but the floating rattle trap would kill them. I hope maybe this will help you.
Brad

[barrelslime]

greg I'm not sure streams are the place to target them. Others can chime in but around here they make a spawn run up the river in the spring and that's a great time to stream or river fish em. Other than that I think they retreat to the lake for summer and fall. This time of the year they are heavily feeding on the tons of shad fry. If confined to a steam or river Id look for shad. White bass seem to move a lot but may congregate around any water break. Hope this helps
Tom

[gregsayers2000]

Thanks for the replies guys. The school feeding on top of the water is how we caught them on the lake. The stream I refer to feeds the Ohio River so no lake is in the equation. Will watch for shad and target there. Otherwise will be happy to catch the odd balls here and there and wait till the spawn next spring.

[kycreek]

I fish the Ohio regularly & have had pretty good luck using a Renosky mirror image shad. Walking thru Walmart a few months ago & picked up a couple of packs. And I need to go back and get some more. Smallmouth & stripers like them also.

[fq13]

I fished for them in Texas and Indiana exclusively in rivers. I used a light fly rod and used number six or number two green and white clouser minnows. They loved those thing. It was rare day yout got skunked. If you don't fly fish try a sparse chartreuse and white 1/16 th or so bucktail. Or just trim a white one so its sparse and color the top green with a sharpie. Fish it in short jerks cross current at mid depth. Good luck and good eating.