Outdoors With Mat Taylor
I've been wanting to go fishing, but...

March is here, and it is time to go white bass fishing, as the annual spawning run should be under way.

I have wanted to go to Colorado Bend State Park and fish for several days, but it seems like each day I plan to go something comes up to prevent it. The weather has been cold, and I had some rain and the wind blew every day.

The state is experiencing typical March weather -- warm days, then cold, then warm and then cold. The only common denominator is the wind. The wind is normal for this time of the year. Thank the Lord Lampasas County has not experienced the grass fires thousands of acres across the state have seen.

I read last week that one fire in Sterling County, northwest of San Angelo, burned more than 200,000 acres of grassland along with some barns, hunters' cabins and several oil field structures.

I have an acquaintance who came from the Northeast. He asked if the winds always blow in Texas.

Yes, I said, at least during this time of the year.

Another reason I have not been fishing is that I am working on my income tax, and that always puts me in a depressed mood. I need to go fishing to put me in a better mood.

Maybe I can get away and go to Colorado Bend this week. I will give you a report next week. I have always enjoyed fishing for white bass, and they are a lot of fun to catch using lightweight spinning tackle.

Some of my favorite white bass lures are red and white Roostertail, a silver Kastmaster spoon, and a red and white Roadrunner.

I use the 1/4-ounce weight with all lures. Also, I have used two jigs in tandem with good results. White, yellow and blue are all good colors, as are silver Rat-LTraps.

White bass are a member of the true bass family.

That family includes yellow bass and striped bass. Largemouth and smallmouth bass are not true bass but are members of the sunfish family.

Whites, also called sand bass or silver bass, have silvery shading from dark-gray or black on the back to white on the belly. Several incomplete lines or stripes run horizontally on each side of the body.

White bass are active earlyspring spawners. Schools of males migrate upstream to spawning areas before females. There is no nest preparation. Spawning occurs either near the surface or in running water with a gravel or rock bottom.

Large females sometimes release close to a million small eggs during the spawning season. Males will crowd around the females as the eggs are released, and sperm is released.

The eggs then sink to the bottom and become attached to rocks and hatch in two or three days. Fry grow rapidly, feeding on small invertebrates.

White bass may grow up to nine inches during the first year. They rarely live more than four years, and a four-pound fish is rare.

The state-record white bass caught in the Colorado River more than 30 years ago weighed 5.56 pounds.

According to Texas Parks and Wildlife, white bass are the fifth-most preferred species among licensed Texas anglers. Schools of whites feeding on shad generate much excitement among anglers.

Once a school has been located, successful anglers often fish the surface with spoons or spinners. Fishing under lights at night also can be very productive.

White bass are excellent fighters and are considered superb table fare.

It seems the annual white bass run above Buchanan Lake has been lower than normal the past few years.

Many anglers blame it on the introduction of striped bass into the lake. They claim the whites cannot compete for food with the larger striped bass, and that stripers will feed on young white bass.

I do not know if that is true or not, but I have fished for stripers on Buchanan, and it sure is fun to hook a 10-pound or larger fish.

When I lived in Johnson City working with the USDA Soil Conservation Service, I had the day off every Presidents Day, and that's when a friend and I usually went white bass fishing. We generally fished below the LCRA dams such as Buchanan, Inks and Max Starcke. We either caught a lot of fish or none at all, depending whether the whites were running or not.

In years past, I fished several times on Falcon Lake, and one spring during the white bass run my father-in-law and I caught more than 100 whites a day. Most were released to run again.

We kept enough to have a fish fry when we returned home, though.

Former Soil Conservation Service employee and longtime writer Mat Taylor offers his outdoors column for Dispatch Record readers. He can be contacted at (254) 518-2262 or via email at mntaylor@agristar.net.