Well, it's that time of year. We are already catching white bass in the Yegua. Robert is probably sleeping with his 3 weight by his bed and waking up in cold sweats with anticipation!!

I have been reading and watching a lot of videos on white bass flies. A lot of the information points to using very sparsely tied clousers or crazy charlies. I started experimenting with some crazy charlies and silly leg nymph patterns. (All advise is welcome)

What are your favorite white bass flies and color patterns?

What are your thoughts on sparsely tied patterns? What is too sparse? What are you trying to achieve?

in the case of sand bass flies sparse is actually better- think ghost minnows. I like these flies.

Les

I caught lots sandies with these flies:

Greatness right there

Thanks Peepaw, great bait fish and color pattern. That should work when they are feeding on shad vs. ghost minnows.

Great ties and color patterns Moon. Thanks.

I'm not sure I will enjoy catching them that small though, LOL!!

Thanks Keebranch, good advice.

No advise from here. My lake is always "stained". So I like some size and flash. I use only Crystal Flash in a combination of chartreuse, silver and copper with chartreuse as the dominant color. If I over load the fly with too much flash that it effect the rod load I just trim it off on site. Gamakatsu size 1 hook, 5/32 brass dumbbell, red thread for the head with clear Loon coating. I'm going to try tying some this weekend using a kink shank popper hook an idea I got from the net.

Great alteration Zip-ur-Fly. I'm going to try that. I actually used flash to wrap around the hook shank on one of the flies. I was thinking about doing the whole thing in flash like this but wasn't sure if the action or look of the fly would work. Now I know, thanks.

White works best on the Yegua.

Thanks. Usually my first tie is to wrap the hook from head to bend with the red thread. I like red flash on the shank also. Sometimes use a red hook. I feel the touch of red actually produces better. IMHO.

That actually brings up a good point. Red, from what I have read, can represent either a gill pattern or bleeding fish. I have also read that a bleeding fish pattern only works well at certain times of year. In this case, I would assume the red head would represent a gill pattern. Now, I just need to figure out what color gills the ghost minnows have and how the white bass see that color at 8' deep in stained water, LOL!!!