Yellow Bass

[augs]

I've found a couple places here in Central Arkansas where I consistently catch Yellow Bass, and I was just wondering how many of you all fish for them. I hear very little about them, and one of the Arkansas State Recreation brochures that I have refers to them, but says that they are not considered sportfish by many people. They aren't real big, but they're as big or bigger than the blue gills I catch around here; and they have an odd style of fighting: they'll thrash around and pull pretty hard for about 15 seconds, and then they seem to just go belly up. But when you get a bigger one (the largest I've caught have been about 10 inches and pretty plump), I think they're a lot of fun to catch on a fly rod, and they seem to be pretty aggressive eaters (and I always outfish the bait-fishers! They seem to like small bits of food...)

I've noticed too that they tend (like their cousins the White Bass) to make a lot of surface noise--chasing shiners and flipping their tails up--but they don't seem to take surface flies much. Oddly (maybe somebody can explain this), even when they seem to be chasing minnows, I catch most of the with a Hare's Ear fished in slow twitches across the bottom--maybe some of the surface noise is their tails coming out of the water as they rummage around on the bottom for insects? I've also had luck catching them as I start to pull my nymph toward the top of the water--again, with the fly moving more like an insect than a minnow.

Anyway, I was hoping to hear from other people who have caught them, or even sought them out--what kind of strategies have you used? do you like to fish for them? etc... Also--how are they for eating, and do you have a favorite way of preparing them? I usually fish with my 6-month old daughter strapped to my chest, so I always catch and release because it's too much trouble to carry a cooler and kill the fish and so forth--but if they're good eating, I'm thinking I need to have a little fish fry in the next couple of weeks.

I know this is a lot of questions--but I'm really just looking to hear what other people's experience with this species is.

Thanks!

Mike

[Gordon Bryson]

Mike, we catch yellow bass in Caddo Lake over on the Texas-Louisiana line. Most of them are in the smaller range, but they do get a little larger. Not as large as the white bass. Back in December was the last time I fished Caddo, we were catching them in 10-12 feet of water, right on the bottom. Since it took so long to get a fly down even with a sinking line, we reverted to small cypert type minnow flies with a bell weight to get to the bottom (fly on a dropper rig) on an ultralite spinning rig.

While they are fun to catch, and put up a pretty good fight, they are not considered game fish in Texas and there is no limit on size or quantity if you keep them.

They are excellent eating, and you can filet them just like a bass or crappie, or big bluegill. We usually just dip them in batter and fry like any other panfish. I believe they are more akin to the perch and panfish family than the bass, however, they do resemble some of the basses like sandies, whites, and small hybrid stripers.

What part of Arkansas you fishing?

[Gordon Bryson]

Mike, I forgot to say my friend catches them on bead head wooly buggers, etc when they tend to come to shallower water or even suspend closer to the surface in deep water. He catches lots that way when fishing for crappie in the early spring.

[augs]

Gordon:

I'm living just north of Little Rock, and have only caught the yellow bass on one lake: Lake Conway, which is a large but shallow dammed fishing lake. Your friend's experience fits with mine: I've caught most of the ones I've caught in the last six weeks or so, relatively shallow or suspended within 5 feet of the surface in deeper water, and they often seem to be hanging out around the crappie (which I have a lot harder time catching--it's funny, but one of the reasons I think I "outfish" the spin/bait casters where I often fish is that they are seeking only crappie, and I'm happy to catch the yellow bass. So when we both leave, and I've caught 15 bass and they have 2 decent crappie, we both think we've done better!).

Mike

[Gardenfish]

what the heck is a yellow bass - a perch?

[check your fly]

Gardenfish,

The yellow Bass is a temperate bass (family Moronidae, genus Morone species mississippiensis) it is a close cousin to the quite Bass and the striped bass. It is the smallest of the temperate basses in Arkansas. The current state record is 1 lbs. 13 oz. (two specimens, one from Old River Lake in Pulaski County and another from Hargrove Reservoir in Arkansas County). There is no limit on Yellow Bass in Arkansas currently. Henry Robinson reported in his book "Fishes of Arkansas" that they are a lowland species found primarily in clear to turbid water in the backwaters of large rivers and especially in their associated oxbow lakes. He also reported that the largest Arkansas populations were in Lake Chicot (Chicot County), Horseshoe Lake (Crittenden County) and Mallard Lake (Mississippi County). He also reported that yellow Bass do not move into tributary streams for spawning runs anywhere near to the degree of their White Bass cousins.


agus

I live about 90 minutes away from you. I must hook up with you sometime. I would love to add Yellow Bass to my short list of species caught on the fly rod.


------------------
Chuck Hitt

[Gordon Bryson]

Mike, I'm assuming Lake Conway is the lake on the right (or at least most of it) when you're westbound on I40 coming into Conway.
We go to Branson that route and I've always thought that would be a great crappie, bream, etc lake with all those trees and brush. I've seen it very low once and there was a lot of exposed lake bottom, so we assumed it was on the shallow side. But it does look like a good fishery. My friend holds the Texas fly fishing record for yellow bass (from Caddo) and I think it's like 1.47 lbs, less than the one that almost went 2 lbs in Arkansas. He likes the cone head wooly buggers as you can get them further down to the suspended fish, but can't reach them with that when they're in deeper water.

[Gardenfish]

Chuck thanks for the yellow bass primer. SOunds like 3 wt. time.

[augs]

Yep, Gordon, that's Lake Conway. It seems like most of the guys out there fish it for crappie, with some bass anglers thrown in there. Apparently in the 1960s and 1970s, it was known as a world-class bluegill lake, but sendiment and a bad flood in the 80s really altered the fishing; plus they started stocking crappie in 1970 or so. I was out the other day fishing, and a guy saw me flyfishing and stopped to talk. Turned out that he grew up on the lake in the 60s, and he said it was standard summertime practice to flyfish with poppers for bream in the lake, but he hadn't seen anyone (nor have I) flyfishing on the lake in many years. I tend to think of warmwater flyfishing as a relatively new development, but that is obviously not so!

And thanks for the details about the Yellow Bass, Check Your Fly. So is this fish pretty much limited to lower mid-South? It sounds like that might be the case.

mike

[jsalkas]

Illinois has them in their nuclear cooling lakes as well. In my opinion, they're not quite as good fighters as bluegill, but they're still fun.