‘The white bass are here! And they’re biting!’
As February crawls along, hundreds of thousands of winter-weary freshwater anglers focus their hopes on a fish that blessedly busts these depressing doldrums.
“The white bass are here! And they’re biting! Good fish. Some really big females, fat and full of eggs!” Jane Gallenbach practically giggled through the phone when reached on her boat on a rare sunny February afternoon this week. “I just caught and released a dozen before I took a break. I should have weighed one; it was huge. … Oh, Tom’s got a double on, right now! It’s on!”
The effervescent Gallenbach and husband Tom, who operate River Ridge Campground and Guide Service on the Sabine River just upstream from Toledo Bend Reservoir, were scouting fishing prospects for their clients. Like the white bass they pursue, those clients stream to the river each late winter and early spring.
The white bass’ particular behavior, as well as its range and accessibility, make it a fish attractive to many Texas freshwater anglers regardless of experience, especially this time of year. They are the first freshwater fish to break winter’s siege of slow fishing, giving anglers the chance to begin a new fishing year with a bang.
Hit it right — find the right spot on the right river on the right day — and it can be almost fisha-cast action.
This potential for fast fishing is tied to white bass’ spawning behavior, which puts large concentrations of these aggressive fish in relatively small areas.
Statewide success story
That such an opportunity exists across a large reach of Texas is somewhat serendipitous. White bass didn’t exist in the Sabine River or almost any other river system in Texas until relatively recently.
White bass — a “true” bass, unlike largemouth bass, which are a sunfish species — are native only to the Great Lakes and the Mississippi and Ohio river drainages. In Texas, they are native only to the Mississippi-tied Red River drainage, which also includes Big Cypress Bayou and Caddo Lake.
In Texas, white bass were found only in Caddo and the Red River until 1932. That year, fisheries managers with the Texas Game, Fish and Oyster Commission, the precursor of Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, captured 13 white bass from Caddo Lake, transported them alive to thennew Lake Dallas, and released them.
They thrived; the reservoir on the Elm Fork of the Trinity River was perfect habitat for white bass. So, too, were the reservoirs across the state into which white bass were stocked after the success at Lake Dallas.
By the 1950s, white bass populations had been established in reservoirs on most river systems in Texas — the Sabine, Trinity, Sulphur, Neches, San Jacinto, Colorado, Brazos, Nueces, Guadalupe and Rio Grande.
White bass are open-water predators that hunt in schools, a behavior that dominates their lives. They spend almost their whole lives roaming open water, hunting shoals of threadfin shad. Reservoirs created this habitat and forage base in an abundance.
But when it comes time to spawn, white bass need moving water. The rivers that feed Texas reservoirs serve that role.
Spawning fever
Each late winter, white bass begin an exodus from the open water of reservoirs into the rivers that feed those lakes. Males, which are smaller than the females, are the first to head upstream, followed by females that are growing plump with eggs. Millions of them crowd into the relatively tight confines of the river channels.
White bass are one of the first freshwater species to feel the annual spawning urge. While most other fresh water species, such as largemouth bass, catfish, crappie and sunfish, spawn when water temperatures hit and hold at 60-70 degrees, white bass spawn in water as cool as 55 degrees and even a bit lower.
The white bass move up rivers and other waterways, gathering in huge concentrations in eddies, deep holes and channels, awaiting the combination of water temperature, current flow, photoperiod and hormones that trigger active spawning.
That spawning takes place in relatively shallow water — often sandbars or gravel/rock bottom in water with a weak but sufficient current where females release their eggs (as many as 900,000), which are fertilized by a swarming bevy of males.
The fertilized eggs hatch within a couple of days, drifting downstream with the current, eventually ending up in the reservoir where the fish grow to maturity.
All of those hordes of white bass stacked in rivers are hungry; rivers in late winter or early spring often do not offer an abundance of shad or other prey. That makes them very susceptible to anglers offering anything that looks like a shad or other edible morsel.
That aggressive feeding combined with the number of whites that tend to concentrate in small areas of a river can produce almost nonstop hook-ups for anglers who find these staging areas.
Small but fierce
White bass aren’t particularly large; in most Texas fisheries, they average 1-1.5 pounds. They’re larger in East Texas, where the fisheries are richer in nutrients than in most rivers father west.
The Sabine and Trinity rivers see the largest whites, with the Sabine universally seen as holding the best fishery. There, 2-pounders are common and 3-pounders are not impossible. (The record white bass from the Sabine, caught by one of Jane Gallenbach’s clients, weighed 4.04 pounds.)
Despite their modest size, white bass are fine fighters on tackle that doesn’t overwhelm them.
They use their deep bodies and river current as leverage against rod and line, and can make powerful runs — some anglers call white bass “speed perch” because of their behavior when hooked.
They are a light-tackle fish. A light spinning reel or spincast rig spooled with 8- to 10-pound monofilament or a braided line of similar diameter is a good choice. A light baitcaster works fine, too.
The best lures imitate shad. Perhaps the most popular white bass lure is an eighth-ounce or quarter-ounce Roadrunner jig or similar jig trimmed with marabou or a softplastic grub. Small shadimitation crankbaits and in-line spinners such as a Rooster Tail or Mepps Anglia also will draw strikes.
Off to a good start
This year, prospects for the annual white bass spawning run are encouraging. Already, anglers fishing in South Texas where the water warms earlier — such as the Frio River above Choke Canyon or the Nueces River above Lake Corpus Christi — have reported good catches of white bass.
Things are just getting cranked up in East Texas. Water levels in most rivers, which have been in flood stage or nearly so much of autumn and winter, have fallen considerably over the past couple of weeks and are clearing.
Scattered catches of white bass, often males that are the vanguard of the annual upstream migration, have come from traditional spots on the upper Neches. Also, scattered catches have been made on Yegua Creek above Lake Somerville and in the San Jacinto River drainage, including Spring Creek and Cypress Creek.
The spawning run hasn’t rally kicked off in the Trinity River upstream from Lake Livingston. Reports from the Lock and Dam near Centerville, one of the traditional hotspots for spawning-run white bass fishing on the Trinity and a spot with often extremely productive bank-fishing opportunities, indicate fishing this week has been slow. But the river level has dropped considerably in the past week or two, and if it stabilizes and clears a bit, the annual run could kick into high gear any day.
It seems about to hit high gear on the Sabine above Toledo Bend. Jane Gallenbach, who grew up fishing the Sabine and has guided anglers on the world-class white bass water since 2002, said the fishing significantly improved this week and should just build in the coming month.
The white bass spawning season typically builds to a peak during March in East Texas and a little later on the Colorado River in Central Texas, with the good fishing sometimes lasting into April.
By that time, spring has come to most of Texas and other fish — largemouth bass, catfish and crappie — call to the state’s freshwater anglers. But it’s the annual white bass fishing saturnalia that often gets so many anglers through the tough times of late winter and early spring.
Truth is, for many the annual white bass spawning run is not just the year’s first opportunity to enjoy very good fishing, it’s the highlight of the entire year.