Sand bass 2011!
Posted By Joel on March 18, 2011
They’re BACK!
Our local sand bass run has officially started. While other locales further south have had fish for days and even weeks (like the famous run up the Colorado around Bend SP), our fish had to wait a bit for the right water temps. The warm, humid weather of the last few days and nights evidently kicked things into gear as we caught several fish yesterday morning in only a few hours. No hybrids yet – they seem to follow the sand bass about a week
Gear of choice was a 4 lb. ultralight spinning rig and 1/16 oz. jigs. I would love to tell you how we “slayed ‘em” on fly tackle but that’s not the case. Sorry, purists – but sometimes a fly rod is REALLY a pain-in-the-ass. When stream-side brush takes away your backcast AND overhead limbs limit roll casting there’s not much to do (well, actually, there is . . . we sent our “fly only” companion on a beer run when he started whining about not being able to fish). The are some spots on the river below the Ray Roberts dam that DO ALLOW for a good cast and we’ll hit those in the next few days.
As usual, the sand bass (aka, white bass) showed no preference for color in the lures. We caught fish on pink/white, chart., red/white, yellow, silver (shad), and even a crawfish pattern. Fly choices can be limited to a #4 chart. Clouser with pink/white a close second. Vary the sink rate with different eye combinations – you need to be close to the bottom. You WILL get hung-up quite a bit so it helps to have plenty of flies. I like to tie up several dozen on thin wire hooks that I can pull off of a hang-up and bend back into shape. A sand bass is not going to straighten a hook (and neither will a hybrid if played properly). I usually run a double fly rig with my “sand bass fly” (how about that for an original name!) with the clouser. I fished the same rig yesterday with the fly about 18″ above the jig. I’ll post a description of my sand bass fly later.
Keep your leaders less than 9′ and thinning out to about a 3X. Fluoro helps get the fly down faster but is not necessary with our low water levels this year and gets expensive as you are constantly replacing tippet.
Sand bass taco with a Negra Modelo!
So, pictured above is my first fresh sand bass taco of the year! Caught and released into a spiced egg/milk mixture and Panko bread crumbs. Mmmmm.
Comments
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.