Wow! White Bass; Thanks Dennis Christian!

I had one of those days; it may continue as I might go back down a third time late this afternoon.

Today around lunchtime, it began to just slightly rain out here on Lake Athens, told Louise I wanted to make a few casts. Cabin fever. I had my 5'6" St. Croix, MF, Stradic Ci4+, 10 lbs. Sufix 832, to an a 8lbs. Invizx leader. I had used it yesterday over on the Neches River.

And, I had a #2 Mepps Plain Aglia tied on, one of the sizes Dennis Christian recommends at times for certain circumstances.

First cast from my boat house, 60 or so feet out, 4.5 to 5 ft. of water . . . BOOM! Something big took off and I thought, heck, a large catfish has me as this has happened to me before. The fish plays out a bit, I bring her in, see as it approaches the dock that it is a very large white bass. I am by myself, no camera. It looked close to 20" long, chock full of eggs, just a giant. It had to weigh a solid 3 lbs. but I don't know much gauging white bass. But, it was a giant! It'd be the longest and heaviest I'd catch (so far) over what would be two 30 minute fishing sessions.

Another cast, another white bass. I ended up catching one on about every other cast. They all looked like twins, all appeared to be in the 2 to 2.5 pound range. My boot is 13" and these whites were all about 4 or 5" longer. The first one was several inches longer with a bigger girth. Again, wow!

I should add that I also caught a solid 4 to 4.5 Lbs. LMB that I guess followed these whites back into our cove. A few days ago, it was almost sterile back here, not a fish in sight, no bait fish. What a difference a few days make. And, I snagged and lost a second LMB but it jumped and flung off the tiny Mepps. It looked larger than the one I landed. Wow! LMBs are moving up to spawn it appears.

I ended up with 6 white bass before we had to leave and head to a late lunch.

So, after we got back, I took Louise down with me with her phone camera, made a cast, BOOM! A big white, then another, then another, no LMBs in this second session, but one really healthy nice sized crappie. The photo doesn't do it justice. It likely was in the 1.75 lbs. range. The photo shows it but it curled up as we took the shot of it.

Anyway, I thank Dennis for putting me on to the Mepps. Now, when I read his work, I know he fishes white bass a lot out in deeper water. These I was catching are coming up to spawn. So, since I was in shallow water, I modified the Christian approach as follows: I made nice easy casts, 50 to 60 feet out, let the Mepps drop to the bottom, then lifted and reeled slowly, stopped, let it drop, and lifted and reeled again. They seemed to be hitting it either on the pull up or at the apex of the pull or slightly as it headed back down. I don't recall any biting on the initial drop or picking it up off the bottom.

In my afternoon "session," I fished for about 30 minutes and caught 7 more . . . everyone was in that 16" to 18" class give or take a few inches. They looked like identical twins. I never caught a single small white bass.

They are very strong fighters, bent my medium weight rod like a pretzel. They don't jump, or at least not a one did for me. LMBs? They are more acrobatic, for sure, but pound-for-pound, I think the whites are stronger. They have those giant tails that really create some horsepower!

All in all, about 12 or 13 white bass, one big LMB, one big crappie, one missed really big LMB. Total fishing time? About one hour. Oh, for the occasional day like today!

I hate treble hooks and am always nervous about leaning down and grabbing a bass, especially one with a relatively small mouth and lipping it, so I used my fish grips to pull them out of the water, pliers to dislodge the treble, took time to take photos. This all takes a bit of time, else, I suppose I likely would have made many more casts and caught a fish about every second or third cast. I could have caught 30 big whites if I stayed at it longer.

I'm stocking up on more Mepps Plain Aglia lures, that is for sure!

Again, thanks, Dennis!

Brad (Lake Athens)

Crappie


White Bass


A big one!



13" boot

Those magnum white bass are fun! Great report.

What a great way to spend some time!

Nice!

do athens fish have teeth...lol

Nice looking fish. That second picture looks like a Hybrid but still a nice fish. Congratulations and I am surprised they were that shallow. Do you know what the water temp is?

I thought the same thing regarding the appearance, but Lake Athens has no history of hybrids, no records, no stockings. However, I hold to the "Jurassic Park" theory of "if there's a way, nature will figure it out." That sort of logic. Too, for all I know, Athens Fish & Game, when its dam broke in 2015, it might have them.

Whatever that one is, they were all the same, almost identical twins.

Not certain what the temps are now. I'll ask my neighbor if he knows.

In addition to the normal signs of LMBs migrating up to spawn, white bass, too, I made a mental note that be on the look out for henbit in yards beginning to bloom. It is the little sort of clover-like low growing weed that has the bluish/purple bloom and blankets yards before grass greens up. I noticed it for the first time a day or so ago.

What a day!

Brad

Great Catch! I like boat houses.

An observation or two (or more) about Lake Athens.

It is largely spring fed, not a particularly large watershed, good annual rains compared to D/FW, about 10" more per year. Even with a light drought, it was 6" high just the other day. But, it isn't fed from a large river system, just a couple of creeks, if that. My cove is below Athens Fish & Game Lake, but no water ever seems to be released from AF&G, no current. Well, except when its dam broke in 2015.

So, the white bass don't have any rivers/creeks/tributaries to run up into to spawn. In contrast, they can run for miles and miles up the Sabine River from Toledo Bend, miles and miles up the Neches from Lake Palestine and the same on many other lakes. So, when there aren't these sorts of opportunities, white bass will try to find shallower water with at least some wind-blown water, some of the sorts of bottoms they prefer. My cove seems to meet the requirements this year. My neighbors told me they used to run up here so hard you could actually see them, that they looked almost like salmon running up river.

*** Last year, a nice guy floated by in a bass boat, we exchanged hellos and info. I told him what I had caught, mentioned that I had caught a nice white bass on the ultralight tackle I had in my hand. He said, "Hmm! I have been fishing Lake Athens for well over 30 years and I have never heard of anyone catching one, didn't know they existed. In essence, he must have thought I misidentified it. No arguments, of course, and he floated down to the very next boathouse, pulled in a fish. He held it up so I could see it: a white bass.

You live and you learn.

Two old dudes at their boat in the parking lot after fishing, another day, and I asked them as I walked by how they did. Just fine, they said. Bass? No, they said, white bass and some crappie. I told them the story about the guy claiming they weren't in this lake, then catching one minutes later. They laughed and told me it was one of the best kept secrets on the lake.

Anyway, Athens is a super clean and healthy lake system. Tons of the things all fish seem to like: structure and cover and lots of bait fish to feed on. And, Texas Freshwater Fisheries dumps lots of fish in Athens, too.

If I could change one thing this year, it'd be to dial down my LMB fishing to something more like:

50% whites and crappie, 25% other panfish, and only targeting LMBs about 25% of the time.

LMBs seem almost boring compared to targeting and catching the others. They have their seasons, too, for sure.

*** Just placed an order for 5 #2s, 5 #3s, 5 #4s of the Plain Aglia, silver blades. I need to review Dennis Christian's primer on white bass fishing. He recommends #2s at some times, #4s as I recall at others. I can't recall the logic behind it but I think he uses #2s when fishing is slow. They'll bite a #2 and pass most of the time on #4s. Something like that.

Brad

Those are hybrids

#2 when shad are spawning and LOTS of new small shad to feed on. Split shot 18 inches above lure to help get it down.

Yes! Thanks! I believe that was the "logic" behind when they want a smaller Mepps, a #2, that you use them when they are focused in on the smaller shad at times, not the larger ones.

Sort of odd . . . most of us focus on whatever is new and hot in terms of lures, then we tie on something as old and plain looking as can be like an in-line spinner, and boom. Any season, anywhere I have tossed these things over this past year, I have had something biting on them.

Brad

Go down and buy a few single hook curly tailed Roadrunners, any color as long as it's white.....They will catch anything that swims, and no treble hooks to have to deal with.

If I was dropped off in any wilderness and had only one lure to survive on it would be a #2 mepps in either gold or silver. I have caught at least a dozen species on them

Get single hook mepps on thier web site. Silver and white blades.

Good points about the curly tails, I have those and love them, and that you can order single hook Mepps.

I'll transfer some more pics from this morning. I went down, caught about 25, every single one of them was over 14" and I think the largest one from today was around 17".

I bet at least 5 of them weighed over 3 lbs. as they were very gravid females just busting with eggs.

What else? I'll attach a few photos later of the LMBs that have moved into the shallows. I caught 4 really nice sized LMBs on the tiny Mepps.

I think I could have caught even more with a #4 Mepps just because they seemed to be a few yards farther out toward the creek channel. The extra weight would have given me the distance I needed.

So, 25 or so white bass, all large, 4 LMBs. I yelled over to a neighbor and he came over and caught one LMB and one white bass using a gold colored inline spinner of some sort.

Brad

Below, one of the LMBs that came out to play today with the white bass. It jumped around as I shot the photo but the 4 I caught were in the 15" to 18" size range.

The white bass in the photo? I was attempting to get a measurement of her width which appeared to be about 5" from its backbone (not including her dorsal fin) down to her big belly. The tape helps sort of show how fat these whites are.

Brad

Amen! For a moving lure, I've never seen anything better with as wide an appeal to more species of fish. From my dock: panfish, crappie, catfish, white bass and LMBs caught on these silly looking things.

Go figure!

Brad

I just now enjoyed reading this string of posts since I spent the weekend visiting my kids and grandkids in Waco and Georgetown. I love to see people get as excited as I do about fishing. Thanks for your detailed reports. It's very gratifying to me to see others having fun using the tips I share on TFF. Those are some huge white bass. I've never fished Lake Athens. Maybe I could pull my boat over there and do some structure fishing for whites with you this year.

Re the fish in shallow water, I also would be interested in what the water temp is in your cove.

White Aglia

https://www.mepps.com/information/aglia-dressed-aglia/121#B4P%20GW

What a fantastic day fishing! I read all of Dennis’s info also, and stocked up on the Mepps. i have only tried it one time with no luck, but I am gonna keep after it! Very happy for you!!!

Dennis, I look forward to you, others, too, coming over to fish. I've never fished for white bass outside of the shallow water, spawning season type of fishing. Others on the lake chuckle about this hidden secret. Athens is more noted for its LMBs, for sure.

I want to learn to catch them in deeper water, out of the spawning season.

Water temps were 45 to 49 degrees the week of February 14 and I suspect low 50s while I was fishing the last two days. Water is and was stained up here from recent rains, holds heat better, and I believe that northern areas on lakes tend to warm up faster . . . though the reason for this escapes me as I type.

One added comment related to the size of these white bass. I sent some details/photos to Dr. Richard Ott at TPWD who oversees Lake Athens and many others in this region and he sent back this comment:

"Brad, thank you for the report. As you can imagine the white bass population on Lake Athens is not as extensive as a river fishery such as at the Neches but enough fish spawn on windswept points to maintain a fishery. Because intraspecific competition between white bass is so low the few that are present grow very rapidly and get very large. This has been the case at Lake Athens since I began working on the lake in 1982."

Dennis, I think this is the answer to the size I encountered, sort of a "quality over quantity" environment. My cove runs north and south and the wind often funnels down it with some speed, creates some wave action. I fight it in my kayaks/canoe all of the time, this wind. This provides an adequate, though not optimal, alternative to white bass running up into rivers/creeks/tributaries, etc. to spawn. TPWD studies show small populations of white bass on Athens that vary from report to report.

I suppose I ended up, counting those I caught today, with close to 40 white bass and not fishing all that many hours, quite a few LMBs and one big crappie. I believe at least 5 of the white bass were > 3 lbs., the longest was well over 18" though most were in the 15" to 16" range.

Cheers! Brad

The Athens lake record for white bass is 3.01 lb and 18.25 in long. You may have had the new lake record.

Dennis, yes, I have seen all the species records out here. I think I exceeded the length record with several white bass, the weight record with 5 or possibly more.

And, I published some photos on TFF last year of some of the bluegills I have caught, one or two over the official length record though not weighed so uncertain of their exact weights.

Two 13+ pound LMBs were caught in 2014, too.

All of these stats seem to indicate a very healthy fishery, for sure!

Brad

I want to try some Mepps this year. I have some with the standard brown tails that I used in Wisconsin. What style and colors should I buy? Plain or or with tails?

Plain Aglia #2 and #4 silver or white. You will need to add some weight (3/16 oz) up the line 12 to 16 inches to make the #2 cast-able and to get it to sink faster.

Dennis, which do recommend ..... Single hook or treble?

I'll let Dennis answer the question directed to him. He has perfected these techniques, kept good records over decades.

My Mepps were #2s, silver, plain Aglias. This is how I interpreted the available material regarding which Mepps to buy . . . from reading his articles and posts, from his video showing him using his technique out on main lakes.

I mentioned that I thought I might have caught even more with a #3 or #4 and it was in reference to what Dennis has added above, that I could add casting distance for the particular situation I was in. Based on where I was getting bit, I thought that if I could cast even another 10 or so feet, I'd have found more white bass. I'm going to try adding some weight, too.

If you guys haven't read what I believe might be Dennis's original write-up on his technique, the discovery of it, this will be worth a few minutes:

Dennis Christian Mepps article

And, his video:

Dennis Christian White Bass Technique

Brad

Tc24: Definitely a treble hook. I want to maximize my chances of catching a fish when it strikes. If I lose even one of the 3 hooks of a treble, I will replace it with a new lure. I can't imagine fishing a Mepps with a single hook. If you watch a Mepps swim through the water you will see that the hook is rotating making it harder to snag the fish. On a jig the hook is stable and a single hook works just fine.

Thanks Dennis, I like so many on here really appreciate you sharing your knowledge! Thanks to Brad R also for posting this thread & sharing his experience/pics with us! Those are some monster white bass!

I found a few more photos from my flip phone camera (it still works after two dunks into lakes!!!)

Two fat white bass in the 15.5" to 16.5" range; one the 4 LMBs I caught on the same Mepps. I think it was about 18" if the tape was lined up correctly.

I just sort of tossed a tape down there as a general guide, spent no time aligning them perfectly.

Brad

Awesome post!

nice sandies!!!