Has anyone fished the sanjacinto river / stubble field north of lake Conroe in the recent years. I haven't been white bass fishing there in a few years since they were killed off and am wondering if they are coming back or not.

Not saying they aren't there, but I tried a prime spot last spring. Fished it for 6 hours and I only got one bite. It was a nice hybrid, but it was the only line sided fish I caught that day.

That's a bit disappointing.

Yeah, the reason I went was because I'd heard a rumor that there were whites being caught. There may be some in there, just not in the numbers they had years ago. Trust me, I fished Conroe in it's heyday, ever since the big drought, the whites seemed to have disappeared.

Today I confirmed that lake Conroe no longer has any white bass. The good news is that it is very abundant in crappie. I caught approximately 50 crappie today close to stubble field. Didn't catch a single white or hybrid. I used to catch at least 100 white bass a day a few years ago. Kinda wondering if the lack of having to complete for food with the white bass is causing a larger population of crappie. Either way it was a good day of fishing.

has anyone tried other than north? And how far north..

Crappie can be a very overwhelming fish... Put some in a stock pond even heavy with bass untouched for a good number of years.. Can't count how many ponds Iv fished that are full of stunted crappies and perch.. Still wonder if the whites have just learned to start earlier the last few years

Crappie are doing well on conroe due to the fact that the lake was low and allowed a huge amount of vegetation to grown and then be submerged a few years ago. Same thing happened on Lake Livingston. A few years after the lake was low and then raised up to flood vegetation crappie populations skyrocket. Conroe has relatively scarce vegetation due to the dumbos that dropped those carp in that lake (homeowners on the lake demanded it yadda yadda). My dad used to fish it back in the 70's and it was clear water with loads and loads of grass beds. Crappie and bass used to be everywhere. I never got to experience it. Get the crappie on Conroe while you can, because the boom usually lasts only a few years.

Very interesting. Lake Somerville went through the same thing. The drought of 2011 and then the flood last year that brought the lake 20 feet above normal and went over top of the emergency overflow. The population of small crappie, bluegill and lmb has exploded.

Also, the white bass run on Somerville starts much earlier than any place I read about. I start catching white bass in Yegua creek as early as December 4th. I actually saw white bass spawning in one of the smaller creeks in early February. Global Warming

There are very few white bass on lake Conroe. We've caught about 5 over the past two months. The new lake effect caused by years of drought followed by flooding does have and explosive effect on crappie and largemouth populations on any lake.