Nueces River spring trip #6 - Starts now

[oneeye]

Looks better then the snow storm I worked in yesterday!

[Leonhogboy]

Good luck this year Tim.

[AntlerCollector]

Off to a great start already. Keep ‘em coming

[Radar]

Them boys probably holed up this morning. 42 degrees, 5 mph wind and raining.

[RiverRat1]

tagged
I was out at my place last week getting septic and other stuff squared away.

I talked to a guy at the ramp that said the white bass were scattered but still found some.

Never seen so few whites this time of year. Almost none in this 4 mile stretch of river.

Yessir that’s a nice Opelousas! Did y’all get a weight on him?
That one fish will make a pretty good fish fry!

Didn't weight but 14-18#'s Caught on cut buffalo.

Where abouts y'all at on the river? Not looking for your specific spots just general area. When I read the title I was thinking north of Uvalde but then I saw the bass boat and was like nope not up there. Ya'll down by the coast?

I believe his place is in the George West area...right before that river becomes a lake.

Between the lake and 59 bridge in GW.

Them boys probably holed up this morning. 42 degrees, 5 mph wind and raining.

About to go check lines. Not sure if we spend much time trying to catch bait as it was very hard to get yesterday and may be even harder today. I will try places where fresh water may be flowing in after that rain but I doubt we got enough rain.

We will work around the house for a few days and start fishing hard again Monday.

[SaltwaterSlick]

Well good luck with the lines this morning! Hope you can find yourself some perch to bait up with, but this cold probably got 'em a bit too deep for a cast net. You got any clover leaf perch traps?

[RifleBowPistol]

Never seen so few whites this time of year. Almost none in this 4 mile stretch of river.

I am curious how y'all find white bass up in that part of the river? I have seen multiple of your posts in the past about catching white bass, and read other guy's posts on catching white bass in the river.

I grew up outside of Corpus, the only place we ever used to catch white bass, was below the dam in the spring, when the water was flowing over the dam, and it turns out they were spawning. Back then we thought it was just because there was water flowing over the dam, after heavy spring rains. Most of the year, there was very little water flowing over the dam, but in the spring, after heavy rains, it would be flowing strong. The white water produced by the flow, would bring in a lot of shad, that would get banged around in the rocks, which would kill a bunch of them. It made for a lot of chum, so the fishing was great. The dam, I am talking about, is the one, just up stream of what is now called Labonte Park, back then it was not a park, just a piece of land along the river, people just went there to fish.

Back then we used to catch a lot of white bass, on every trip, that is the only place I have ever gotten into white bass, if it was not for that dam, I would never have known there was white bass in the river. When we fished the dam, in the spring, we would catch a bunch of white bass, then usually come back with one or two flounder, a couple of reds, some good sized large mouth and some healthy cat fish. That brackish water had just about everything it it everything in it, the only salt water fish I never saw in that river, were specs. The specs don't seem to like the lower salinity. We have caught lots of black drum and seen a lot of huge alligator gar, all the way down to the ship channel. My grandfather used to fish the river from the dam, down stream for cats, that was his thing. He used to have around 30 acers on the river, down stream of the dam.

We fished very little up stream of the dam, we fished Mathis Lake a few times, did pretty good on catfish, that was all we ever caught out of that lake. We took a couple of canoeing trips from Calallen, up most of the way to Mathis Lake. On those trips, we only caught cats and large mouth bass, saw lots of gar. This was all back in the 80s.

So the whole catching white bass in the river during the spring spawn, in areas besides the dam, is something I know nothing about. I hear about people doing so, just have no idea how they find them, or catch them. I would think they would be looking for small creeks that dump into the river, head up those to spawn. I don't have a clue. We always thought it was the fast flowing, turbulent water and the shad, that brought the white bass to the dam. It mostly was, but there was also the spawn. I know there is a creek dumps into the river, just down river of the dam, I would think would be where the white bass would go to spawn, and going to the dam to fill up on shad.

[Hunting4fun]

It was colder than a witches *#$* this morning so I stayed in. Tim just sent me this one they just pulled up. It will be CPR. Hopefully the weather won't be as bad as they are predicting this weekend.


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[Mule Skinner]

Usually caching white bass “in the river” in the spring, practically anywhere in Texas, is due to white bass moving into rivers and creeks the feed reservoirs. They seek out the moving water to spawn.

In the case of this post, they are on the Nueces River above Lake Mathis. Early spring, every year, the whites head up past the 59 bridge and up past the Airport boat ramp to spawn.

[SaltwaterSlick]

It was colder than a witches *#$* this morning so I stayed in. Tim just sent me this one they just pulled up. It will be CPR. Hopefully the weather won't be as bad as they are predicting this weekend.


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CPR's my arse!! That right there is some of the BEST eatin' fish on the planet if you know how to clean 'em!! MUCH better than blues!!

[Hunting4fun]

CPR's my arse!! That right there is some of the BEST eatin' fish on the planet if you know how to clean 'em!! MUCH better than blues!!

Nah. Yellow cats are full of that nasty belly meat. I'd rather eat carp or channel cat than that crap. Belly meat is for people who can't catch blues.

Just kidding. There will be plenty more of Yellows caught that we will keep when the weather gets better. We did clean the first one.

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[Gumbo Man]

Y’all are starting out great. Love me some good belly meat.👍👍

[SaltwaterSlick]

Well for us (fished Lake Livingston), later in the year it gets, fatter those ops get... They don't feed as aggressively in Dec., Jan., and Feb.... Bout March, there starts to be a noticeable difference in the fat layers on the bigguns... By mid-April, we stop fishin' for 'em...

[RiverRat1]

I'm guessing 24-26 pounds on that last flathead. I have it in the live well still. Ran to town to get batteries and will weight it soon.

Whites are almost always in the river here at our place because it's 12-15' deep Although there are more when they're running up and back to lake. Only times you can't catch any are hot summer months when water has no oxygen or if Atascosa River is putting out that nasty red water.

[Greenheadless]

tagged
I was out at my place last week getting septic and other stuff squared away.

I talked to a guy at the ramp that said the white bass were scattered but still found some.

Back when I lived down there and chased the white bass, we did best early to mid Jan. if memory serves right. We wouldn’t fish too far up river from the lakes though.