White bass frenzy on the flats

You’re alone in your boat on one of the hottest days of the year. The water is still. Then, a splash behind you. You turn and find only ripples. Next, a kerplunk in front of you. You look to shore in search of rock-throwing kids. Nothing. You look up for the birds that must be making a bombing run on your fishing trip.

Fishing guide Rodney Hairgrove showed off a typical white bass. He and a client each caught the 15-fish limit within 2 hours on Kentucky Lake.

Striped bass sometimes gather with their smaller white bass cousins to mob baitfish in what’s called the jumps. On Kentucky Lake, boats line up at Eureka Flats during the summer to take advantage.
Before you know it, you look down again and the water’s boiling all around you. And you begin to see the culprits: white bass.

They’re murdering a school of baitfish, and those baitfish are going airborne in a frantic attempt to escape.

The scene, occurring at a lake near you and often called the “jumps” in Kentucky, is the perfect opportunity to do some marauding of your own. Simply throw a Rooster Tail, a small spoon or a small crankbait into the middle of the maelstrom. If it shines and moves fast, a fish is likely to hammer it.

Mid and late summer in Kentucky — when the water is warm enough to rival the coffee in your thermos — is the perfect time to target white bass, a favorite for those who love pan fishing and fish fries.

“It’s fast action,” said Rodney Hairgrove, a fishing guide who has been taking customers out for some 20 years on Kentucky Lake and Lake Bark ley. “Customers love it.”

Bass, bluegill and crappie guides often keep a rod and reel armed with a Rooster Tail sitting on the deck in case they run into jumps, which can appear sporadically during a typical summer day.

For the majority of summer, white bass are lurking deeper, chasing baitfish down below just as they do on top. They’re likely to be cornering bait on points or in underwater creek and river channels. They gang up anywhere baitfish bunch up, which is usually anywhere there’s a break in lake current.

Guides teach anglers who want to catch white bass in the deep to fish vertically. They position their boats in shallower water about 15 feet deep and cast or drop spinners or spoons 10 feet farther down to the ledge where the bottom drops down into an old underwater creek or river channel. They reel the spinners as fast as they can or bounce the flashy spoon all along the ledge.

Then they hold on because white bass have one reliable trait.

“They hammer the bait,” Hairgrove said. “There’s nothing delicate about white bass bites.”

Strong currentattracts white bass

Kentucky and Barkley are among the state’s most legendary white bass lakes.

The reason is current, said Paul Rister, the state’s western district fishery biologist who oversees the management of the lakes.

During the hottest days, the Tennessee Valley Authority pulls water through the dam in response to demand for electricity. The hotter the day, the more people use air conditioners. More air conditioning equals a lot more current.

That current pulls bait clumsily onto and over ledges and sometimes even up onto flats. The white bass wait for it. The most famous flats on Kentucky and Barkley are Eureka Flats near the canal that runs between the two lakes. It’s a short run from the Kentucky Dam Village in Gilbertsville.

When water is pulled through Barkley’s dam, it also pulls water from Kentucky Lake through the canal and up onto those flats. The convergence of water from several directions, the big underwater river channel, and the very shallow flats area create the perfect place for baitfish to ball up. It’s also the perfect ambush spot for white bass and anglers.

On any given day during summer, dozens of boats camp out early in the morning on the edge of Eureka Flats, trolling around to find the perfect spot.

It’s one of the few times in fishing where it’s OK to get a little bit closer to your neighbor. Boats line up along the Eureka Flats edge and fish only far enough away from each other to avoid tangled casts.

While Eureka Flats is the most well known, Hairgrove and other guides usually have dozens of spots they’ve mapped out over the years. Every once in a while, he takes clients away from the crowd at Eureka to try out some of them.

His typical gear is light: spinning tackle with six-pound test. On a good day, the fish average a pound. On light tackle, a one-pound white bass can feel like a five-pound largemouth.

An added bonus to fishing in areas where white bass hang out is that striped bass, their larger relatives, also are known to gather to bombard baitfish.

On a recent trip with Hairgrove, his client hooked into a striper with a Rooster Tail. The ensuing battle lasted five minutes as the angler walked around the boat to keep the fish from breaking off. Hairgrove had a client who went out the next day with his kindergarten-age daughter and caught an eight-pound striper doing the same thing.Drought affecting size

Rister said white bass fishing in Kentucky, and particularly at Kentucky and Barkley, is good this year but probably has been better.

He agrees with anglers’ reports of smaller fish. He suspects the reason is drought in recent years.

White bass need and want current to thrive and reproduce. During drought over the past few years, the TVA hasn’t been able to pull as much water out of the lake. Other lakes have the same issue.

“There are fewer fish,” he said. “But there are still lots out there. Rain this year is likely to improve things.”

It’s a good thing. Many guides make their livings on white bass in the summers. They’ll take clients out for white bass in the morning and then switch to much slower largemouth fishing in the afternoon. Still, that rod loaded with Rooster Tail is never far away.

After 20 years, Hairgrove never tires of scouring the jumps. When clients start catching fish, he laughs and gets more and more excited as the frenzy continues.

“You just can’t beat this,” he said.
Chris Poore, a former Herald-Leader staff writer and editor, is the editor of KentuckyFishing.com, a new online fishing magazine.

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