White bass spawn in spring, and the spawn generally peaks as water temperatures approach 58°F. Sexually mature fish form schools and move onto shoals, into estuary areas, or into rivers. Most spawning occurs in water temperatures between 55°F and 60°F. But long before that a gradual buildup to a spring feeding bender begins, and that’s what the whitey run is all about.

Early after ice-out in North Country lakes, white bass school and invade the shallows. Patterns often seem to be wind-driven, the wind moving warmer water that attracts the baitfish that attracts the bass.

In the South, white bass stage in deep holes in the lower sections of a river, or in the main reservoir near the mouth of a river. These fish often stay in these areas all winter.

Oklahoma

Gary Dollahon, a fishing industry insider and great angler, has a passion for white bass and chases them often in the waters near his home in Oklahoma. “The run begins in early spring, especially in impoundments that have a flow of water coming in,” Dollahon says. “It doesn’t have to be much of a flow. In lakes like Tenkiller, Broken Bow, and Fort Gibson, most bass move into current to do their spawning.

“Everybody starts looking for whites in March, but April is the most consistent month. On Lake Tenkiller, the Horseshoe Bend is famous. It becomes a camper city when word gets out that the run is on. Day length and rising water temperatures trigger the runs, but rain and rising flow muddy the water and actually set a run back.”

Dollahon begins fishing during winter, looking for the vanguard of the run. “I search the deepest part of the river channel, just above the reservoir,” he says. “I start with a spoon and have a lot of success in water 15 to 25 feet. I use 1/2- to 3/4-ounce flatsided spoons I’ve been making myself. You get more flutter and a subtle fall with these spoons.

“Keep the lure near bottom. The motion is like playing with a yo-yo. Just as a yo-yo or a jigging spoon hits the end of the string, you give the wrist a forward pop upwards. When you time it right you’re only moving the bait about 12 inches, but still producing a pronounced action.

“As the water begins to warm I move into 6 to 12 feet of water. In that early stage of the run, I use 2- and 3-inch grubs on 1/8- to 1/4-ounce jigheads, with 6- to 8-pound line on spinning gear. Depending on the current, I begin casting or quartering upstream, letting the jig drop some then retrieving it at a slow, steady pace. Most of the fish are still bottom-oriented at this point.

“As water temperatures broach 50°F just before the spawn, the fish get really active,” Dollahon says. “The bite is still concentrated in 6 to 12 feet of water, but I switch to a shallow-running crank like a #5 Rapala Shad Rap. It’s a great spring bait because it resembles a shad, you can move it fast, take the most active fish, and cover water. The rivers hold thousands and thousands of fish at this point, and just plucking the most active ones can still result in 100-fish days. When that’s going on, you can fish almost the entire river, but a protected eddy is always a good place to start.

“Here, a 3-pound white bass is considered a good fish,” he says. “A 5-pounder is pretty rare. Tenkiller, Grand Lake, Fort Gibson, Lake Eufala, and Lake Hudson are the best lakes in Oklahoma, as a rule. You want the water running and you have to call the dams for release schedules. A good day on those lakes, during the heat of the run, is 100 to 200 fish per boat per day, with bass averaging 1.5 pounds or more.“

Kansas

Just one state north, the run starts a week or two later but location is much the same. In-Fisherman Field Editor Ned Kehde also starts hunting them during winter, when conditions allow. “We’ve found white bass concentrated in several deep holes in the rivers above some of our northeastern Kansas reservoirs as early as March 2,” he says. “When all is well in the piscatorial world, we can catch 101 in about three hours. That’s our magic number, our goal, from late winter into early spring.

“These holes are 10 to 15 feet deep. Some say that white bass concentrated in these holes in March and early April are staging, but we don’t have any evidence to support that. The whites are merely there, and we catch them, but we don’t know what their motivations are for being there. It could be that these areas have the best invertebrate populations, which the white bass forage heavily in March and April.

“We cast 1/16-ounce jigs with 2- or 3-inch action-tail grubs in white or chartreuse to the shoreline and slowly swim them back to the boat,” Kehde says. “Red jigs generally produce best. We also use a 1/16-ounce silver-gray jig that consists of a chrome head, silver tinsel body, and silver-gray marabou tail. White-blue-white is another good combo in Kansas. I mention it because color can sometimes be critical with white bass.

“They move out of these holes to their river spawning areas in mid-April, sometimes a little earlier or later. Spawning usually peaks when the water temperatures reach the upper 50°F range, but often continues until the water is slightly over 60°F. I still don’t know if moon phases affect the spawn.

“In three of the reservoirs, we think a lot of the white bass reside in primary feeder rivers year-round,” he says. “But for the past five years the white bass population (at least our catches of white bass) in these rivers has been down. Consequently, our prespawn and postspawn fishing in the rivers hasn’t been as good as it was in 2000, and we can’t make our goal of catching and releasing 101 white bass in three hours.” (Kehde thinks Kansas needs to place a 5-fish limit on white bass but fisheries folks think that’s a cockeyed idea.)

“At times, when the river and lake levels are right, a good number of white bass leave the main body of the reservoir and move up the rivers to spawn; but our knowledge about this phenomenon isn’t based on any hard evidence. Few studies have been done. We do know that in John Redmond Lake a significant number of main-lake white bass attempt to travel up the Neosho River during the spawning season. They’re stopped by a logjam that typically blocks the entrance to the river about this time each year. Many of these bass spawn around that logjam as a result.