Wow at all the fish! Awesome. I think I�m late to the party. Stuck at work. Gonna try Wednesday. Hope y�all left a few for me. I

Does the hybrid make it in the creeks?

I have only hooked into one hybrid in the many years I have fished the creeks and it was this year.My cousin has caught a few over the years.

One day in 2007 we got into a mess of hybrids in the yegua at Newman�s Bottom. I caught a limit of whites and hybrids that one time. I lost a few fish. They would run and break me off. I finally got wise and adjusted my drag. But I think I got lucky more than anything. Haven�t caught any since.

My experience with good numbers of hybrids up the creeks always follows a high water flood event around March to April.
I suspect the hybrids are chasing shad up the creeks and not so much to spawn since it is near or at the end of the whitebass run.

I also believe that the small hybrids are much more likely to head up the creeks with the whitebass to spawn. Considering how difficult it can be to tell the difference between a 10 to 14 inch whitebass and a hybrid of the same size many of these hybrids go unnoticed and possibly on the stringer. To make identification even more complicated Lake Somerville whitebass certainly have cross-bred back with the hybrid over the last 30 plus years so many whitebass have some hybrid characteristics like broken lines not found in pure strains of whitebass.

All three of these are whitebass from Yegua creek but only one looks normal.

which one looks normal? the bottom one?

My nephew and I went to Newman's Bottom this morning and the fishing was still good. Had to work more for them. Would caught 4 or 5 in a hole and would have to move on. I ended up catching 35 good size white and 7 10 1/2 inches. My nephew started out slow but ended up with 21 good size whites. The fishing went dead at about 10:00. 2/3 of the fish were female.

Since my cousin Troy does not know how to post pictures to the forum, this is the picture he sent me of today's catch.

Hey JonL,

It's Tony from Leander. Check your PM.

This is what I've come to conclude. I have pictures of white bass that I've caught out of Somerville and the stripes do not go all the way to the tail as in a Striper or Hybrid type but they have the broken lines.

walked into Newman today. The fish were not as aggressive as we were hoping they would be. We fished from 7:30 till
12:30 and I caught over 40 mostly males and about half of them were in the late stage of their spawning cycle. Most fish were in the 14 to 16 inch range. Had a few throw back and a few broke off. I had to move around quite a bit, had a great day. The flow was good but the water is slowly dropping.

Don't look at the stripes and try to determine what is what, look at the tooth patch on the tongue. One tooth patch in the center is a white bass, two tooth patches on the tongue is a hybrid or a stripper. The patches are located on both sides of the tongue.
Here is a web site that will explain it to you.
http://www.southernstripes.com/striper-f...and-Yellow-Bass

I will be headed over to catch some Somerville whites tomorrow but I have no idea when I'll get there or where I'll start out at, I just know that's the plan. I have a few buddies going to Newman Bottom, so odds are I'll show up there at some point. I fished for two hours on the San Gabriel river this afternoon with only nine dinks to show for my effort. Guess that's why I'm headed towards Somerville tomorrow. The fillets are awesome and well worth ones efforts.