White bass are one of my favorite fish. They fight hard, taste great and when you find them schooled up, attacking bait on the surface the rod dances on every single cast.

if you miss a fish in one of these feeding frenzies there is a good chance another one will find your shad/white/chrome lure before the cast is complete. Here’s an old guide tip: if you miss a white bass, reel faster. they can swim faster than you can reel. When they bump it, they’re just playing with you.

Pool 9 is exceptionally low right now. Even though the flow is 622 at Genoa, siltation has made it difficult to navigate away from the channel. I usually launch at new Albin, cuz its close to home. This boat launch is on Minnesota slough, generally deep enough to navigate downstream from the boat launch to the mainstem.

There are seven shortcuts between Minnesota slough and the River mainstem, all used to be navigable at river flow 622. Due to siltation there are now just two that I will fly through with the boat on plane.

There are a couple spots where white bass still foregather at current seams at this pool level, but most of the action is at current seams caused by rocky structure like wingdams on the River mainstem.

Yesterday I took my neighbor fishing in exchange for fixing one of my outboards and cutting down a huge dead elm. He insisted on using his “lucky” crankbait when we started the trip targeting walleyes on the wingdams.

A big pike broke his heart and shattered his dreams by removing the bend in his rod with sharp teeth. Had to be a BIG pike. In 50+ years of guiding i’ve never had a client lose a LITTLE one!

His frown turned upside down over the next half-hour when he caught a 27″ & 25″ eye off of two different wingdams. He also caught a short. But we couldn’t put a slot fish in the boat.

Then the white bass started blowing up. We kept 18. Robert said he could fillet a white bass in less than five minutes. I told him i could fillet one in less than a minute with my lithium battery Rapala.

Twenty minutes later the fish were cleaned. I felt like Trump being euchered by the Iranians. But what really got to me was the white bass guts.

At least 80% of the fish cleaned were females, fully of mushy eggs. White bass spawn right after the walleyes do, with water temps at about 50 degrees. Why were these fish still carrying eggs which were mushy in the process of being re-absorbed.

Did roller coaster water temps this spring impact this species getting off a good hatch ? Why were 80+% of the fish we cleaned females?

Are white bass like alligators with soil temp driving gender when eggs are laid ? The fish were cleaned were 3 and 4 years old. Could the amphibian gender thing happen two years running if it indeed is a thing?

biologists down know much about river run white bass. They are hard to study cuz they’re always on the move. White bass are “scatter spawners’. they get their lovin’ on the run.

Until three years ago there was no bag limit on white bass in the upper Miss. Prior to that, the last comprehensive survey Wisconsin DNR biologists did was in 1948!

Could the white bass gender reveal when cleaned with bellies full of mushy eggs be a harbinger of River health.

I’m gonna book a room at the Holiday Inn Express on karaoke night and see if wisdom is enhanced.

Maybe karaoke will offer a rendition of Roger Miller’s “Dang Me”, the song I’ve selected as my funeral dirge.