An attempt to find white bass at Lake of the Pines

On Friday, August 26, friends cliffshot and Graham went with me on a challenge to find and catch fish there. A local fisherman had said the white bass were big and implied they were plentiful. I like the challenge of going to a new lake and seeing if I can find and catch a good number of white bass there. There are a lot of good-looking structures on the lake, and we worked hard from about 9 AM until 5:30 PM trying to find and catch them. But, there were few to be found. We caught 6 whites, 3 black bass, and a crappie. We never saw any concentrations of fish on side-scan - just scattered fish. Now we know! I had a similar experience at Lake Limestone about 10 years ago. You just don't know unless you go and try. There are still some Lakes I haven't been to but would like to try: Benbrook, Lavon, Grapevine, Bob Sandlin, Caddo, Bridgeport, Belto, and Stillhouse. I would also like to try Ray Roberts in the summer. I tried in January a couple of years ago, and fish were all 40+ fow deep and non-responsive.

The fish were suspended and scattered. Tough conditions for sure. Go to Ray Bob in November and you'll find them in 30' stacks in 40 foot of water.

Dennis,

When you are ready to go to Bridgeport, I would love to go with you!

Didn’t want to get caught out in the storms on Tawakoni being that it is 2 hrs away so I went to Pines today. I’m a master a catching the 2lb and less bass. Today I got my best on the lake and the perfect eatin size


Also the day started out with a beautiful sunrise

Beautiful - sky and fish!

Diz is living !!

Dennis, I saw Belton & Stillhouse on you "bucket list". I'd love to host you if you plan ahead on a visit down this way. You could leave your boat behind and hop on mine. I think you'd really like working with LiveScope, etc. to find and catch whites in deep, clear water. From Sep. to the end of the year I stay booked ~3 weeks out. Just give me a ring!

Woohoo I would jump on that if i were you, DC.
New Lake, new technology and of course new angler for continuing education both ways

I’ve never caught a sandie in that lake, but there are so many yellow bass you could fill a cooler with em

That's definitely true. I've caught enough white bass and black bass in LOP to fill a cooler in about an hour. The Sabine in the spring is insane the amount of crappie and white bass you can get!

Sandlin & Pines are a couple lakes I frequent.
We kill the big Sandies October thru April @ Sandlin. Curiosity has me wondering if I had a thumper, could I do it year round?
The Pines can be tough for Sandies. In the areas I fish, the time of day is everything. The first and last hours of daylight their in there thick,
the rest of the day it's barren and the fish are scattered pretty thin.

I fish allot on Grapevine, and chase the green fish. I wouldn't mind spending some time with you on GV with a fresh outlook on the lake. I heard the term "Localitis" where locals never venture off the beaten path, saying "I never caught anything there" so they don't go over to other areas. Would be interesting to see how you break down the lake, without any info to lead you astray... I have tons of waypoints for all the normal spots, and the sandbass have been hiding lately. I have seen a push in bait into the larger coves lately, and expect to see them start working them. I occasionally find them in pockets of deep water between random humps, and in the creek channels stuck to the bottom but they are very nomadic.. If you want to chew the fat and hit GV, let me know. I have found fish in very strange places, but typically it isn't far from the food source.

Prosise

Lavon - The white bass are moving around constantly. I find them, catch one, and they're gone. I've also been catching a lot of small ones and yellow bass. Looking forward to the fall when they get in the shallows in the afternoon sun with the bait and you can catch them on swim baits until your arms give out.

My last trip was with one of my buddies in my Sunday school class. He recently bought a bass boat (2009 Nitro) and we took it out Labor Day weekend, Sunday evening to set 6 jugs for some kitties. He wanted meat. Had luck with 5 out of 6 jugs had catches of blue cats in the 2-5 lb range when we checked them at 7:15 am the next day (Labor Day). We then re-baited the jugs and went to find sand bass. We were close to glass house cove, so we check the point. At 8 AM fish were being caught in 7-10 FOW. On board was my brother-in-law, his son 10 years old, me, and him. Everyone was having a blast as we landed about 40 fish in short order. The thing that surprised me was all those catches but only 5 keeper-sized fish. Most were 6-7" shorts and man were yellow bass. We did catch decent 3 channel cats using the #2 Mepps and one on a small 1/2 oz slab. Everything went great except about 40-50 minutes of running the trolling motor the motor started to have less and less power. I asked, "did you charge the battery last night?" He replied, "I didn't think of that." Oh well. Luckily I was able to creep over to a stump, tie off with a dock line, and were able to catch more, about another 20, before we had to leave around 9 am. I felt blessed to have had that first adventure with him on his new boat. I wanted to share what I was seeing on Lavon. I'm sure the larger fish are there, maybe deeper. We fished shallow as it was easier to catch them.