Lake Level is 599.62. Normal summer pool is 599.7 so almost normal. Water temps are running around 77 and lake is gin clear due to very little rain fall.

I have given the crappie a small break and been concentrating on white bass. I can still catch plenty of crappie but the white bass love the heat and bunch up on points and early in the morning actually bust the surface. I love chasing them since wind directions move them and you must figure out the puzzle every day. Once found you can catch a hundred from an anchored position. Kids love this, pulling them in one after another and if you want to get them hooked then white bass is your game.

Each morning I look at different points and ledges facing today’s wind or yesterdays wind. Boat traffic and high skies will push them down on the edge of a point and bunch up if wind is helping push bait to them. White bass need a vertical wall to push their prey up against and use numbers to attack them. This is why a jigging spoon is so effective. One side is curved so when you pop it off bottom it turns on it’s side and flutters back down like a wounded shad. I take it one step further and go up a foot and tie on a 1/32oz. white hair jig. This way yo can get two at once.

White bass are all about attacking anything that another fish has so as many rods as you can get in the water jigging that spoon up and down. It will attract them from far off. Once you fire them up you need to quickly get your fish off the hook and return. This is why I make my own jigging spoons with a circle hook on it rather than the traditional treble. Trebles get snagged on everything and takes too long to get out of the fishes mouth.

I have been tearing up the white bass for several weeks averaging about 75-175 a day. So much that clients have asked me to start making my jigging spoons and selling them on my on-line store and at the retail places that carry my Deep Ledge Jig products. So I am currently working on them and in a few days should have several. I use a standard 5/8oz. Bomber Slab spoon and have for years. It has just been hard to purchase them in my area so I am making them. They have a number 2 circle hook on them and clients love them.

September will start out with them on points in 15-20ft. but once the water temps drop into the low sixties they will move back into coves with a small creek in the back on get out on the huge flats. Both areas will have them very shallow. So shallow on flats that I actually turn the boat and drift them with a 30lb. anchor to stop me once I get into a bunch of them. Trolling motor is too shallow to use. For this we use a two-jig rig and twistertail reeled about as high and fast as you can go. We also use an in-line spinner like a Blue Fox or a blade bait like a 3/16oz. Big Dude.

For the crappie I am using my 14ft. rods and tight lining a minnow in mid depth brush and moving often. 9-9 1/2 inch fish are so abundant that to get your limit of fish over ten-inches you need to hit at least thirty spots a day. I am breaking up the day by crappie in the morning white bass afternoons once we get some wind.

Steve Welch
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