3/29 - 3/30 "On the Hunt...White Bass / Wipers"

This past weekend I'd hoped to get away but an excessively long to-do list around the house kept me in town once again to my great dismay. I really wanted to get back out on some cold, moving water somewhere and try my hand with a few trout but it just wasn't in the cards. To help preserve what little sanity I had left after a hectic week at work I managed to get out on a couple of local lakes and ponds and chase some warm-water fish over the course of the weekend .

Thursday morning I threw some gear in the back of the truck and Joe and I took off for Clinton Lake just outside of Lawrence , Kansas to see if we couldn't hook up with some white bass or wipers. The timing was still a little early for any real heated action but with the recent onslaught of above average temperatures I thought it was worth a shot. Another beautiful Spring day around here that felt more like mid-June than the end of March , although for this year it seems to be the norm.

We spent several hours walking along the dam with me tossing clousers and various shad patterns to no avail , one little smallmouth was all I could interest in my offerings.

There were several other people fishing the rip-rap along the dam and a few of them were catching crappie pretty regularly on minnows under a bobber. While I wouldn't have minded catching a few slabs to make the morning a little more entertaining , my eight weight and box of larger sized streamer patterns just weren't the right tools for the task so I didn't even bother.

We enjoyed the beautiful morning and were off the water in time to hit our favorite sub shop in Lawrence on the way home , can't beat a good ole Yello Sub sammich.

With one strikeout already for the weekend I still needed a fix to take the edge off and thanks to an invitation from a new fishing buddy I had just the plan. I had recently been in contact with Troy , who introduced himself to me through my blog , and we had discussed getting out on the water together and chasing a few whites down at Lacygne Lake. To make the offer even more tempting Troy added the incentive of having found a very large pod of gar and landing a couple of them on the fly on a recent trip. That was all the coaxing I needed and after a phone call or two plans were made to meet up at the lake on Friday afternoon. After a quick introduction at the boat ramp we headed out to try our luck , myself and my two new fishing buddies , Troy and Lilly.

We spent a little time searching the area where he had spotted the gar the week before but it looked like they had moved on for one reason or another so we devised a plan "B". This lake is loaded with shad and Troy had been finding some active whites and wipers chasing baitfish in a couple areas so we put the rope flies away and started the search. It didn't take us long to find the telltale boils of feeding fish once we got in the right area.

The surface action was spotty, with small groups of fish or singles busting shad , but anyone who's ever chased surfacing white bass knows it doesn't take too many fish to make for some fast paced action. We spent the evening chasing surfacing fish and tossing poppers and crease flies.

It was an absolute blast!! If you havn't had the opportunity to watch a small school of whites chase your popper down and then proceed to knock it plum out of the water you're missing out. We weren't able to land anything very big in our evening of fishing but we ended up with a dozen or more fish apiece , all on surface flies.


Even Lilly was getting excited with all of the action going on in the boat , she just couldn't wait to lick that next fish!

We stayed on the lake until the action had all but stopped and the sun was disappearing over the Western horizon , nothing like watching the sun set over the lake to finish off the day.

A very successful day in my book , not only did I catch a few fish but I made two new friends as well , I'm already looking forward to hitting the water with Troy and Lilly in the near future. With the first half of my weekend in the books I began thinking about crossing a few of those
"To-Do's" off my list with the days remaining....of course I've been wanting to get back out and hit that farm pond again too , I hear the bass are on the move. That story will have to wait for another post I guess,
but I have this itching feeling that it won't be too long.