A Zig And A Zag
Your cruising a back bay shoreline pitching cranks into the cattails trying to hook into a nice Walleye. All of a sudden:
BAM!
Your crank is slammed and your thinking:
Game On Baby!
But then something peculiar starts to occur. Instead of a head shake or straight run, your line starts to zig and zag back and forth in the water like a drunken raver at 4 a.m.
As you bring the fish to the side of the boat the pure white form with 4 other white forms swimming next to it reveals one of Devils Lake’s ‘other’ species:
Ole Mr. Whitey- WHITE BASS!
Fast forward to the ice fishing times on the Big Devil, your hunkered over deep water with a Gold Varmint and a minnow head hoping to coax a few Devils Lake Jumbo Perch out of the depths. Suddenly your Vexilar lights up and three big marks rocket up to your lure and your thinking:
Christmas Tree!
Abruptly, all 3 marks stop at your lure for 2 seconds and then rocket back to the bottom, then rocket back, then rocket back to the bottom. You think, maybe crappies, so you start the spastic jigging that will get a crappie school into feed mode and one of those marks slams your jig. It’s a hefty one and pulls some drag and the thoughts of a 2 pound Perch or Slab Crappie start dancing in your head.
As you bring the fish up slowly, about half way up, your line starts to do ‘wheels on the bus go round and round’ circles around your hole. Your visions of a Whopper Gold Nugget or Diamond Mine discovery dwindle as you suspect the culprit at the other end of your line just may be:
White Bass!
The Truth Is In The Flesh
White bass get a bad name for one reason and one reason only, the taste. Fishy! Real fishy. Even though a lot of people enjoy eating fish, most don’t want it to taste too much like, well, fish. White Bass taste fishy. Along the skin side of a filet, white bass have some extremely red, almost burgundy colored meat. This is really oily and where the strong fish flavor comes from. If you like to fry your fish with beer batter or a light dusting and cook it in a fryer, you HAVE to get all of that red meat off of a white bass to make is less fishy. If you like smoked fish, leave it on and that oil will prevent it from drying out too much. Most people I know that keep Ole Mr. Whitey, do so to have it smoked.
Pound For Pound
Its been said that pound for pound, the Blue Gill is the hardest fishing fish around. I would have to think that Ole Mr. Whitey has got to be right up there with it. Their propensity to make back and forth runs on your line make catching them a lot of fun. Lacking large teeth like Pike and Walleyes, lipping them is easy and painless.
Boiling
Once in a while, when in a back bay looking for warm water, we will run across a school of fish that has the top of the water boiling. You can actually see the hundreds of fish bodies up at the surface and the bubbles and splashing are a sight to see. Crank baits pitched into the boiling array are instantly slammed and sometimes 2 fish can be hooked on the front and back hooks of the crank. As you bring the Whitey in, often times 3-5 other Whiteys will be swimming along side the fish that you have hooked.
Great For Kids
White Bass are great for taking kids out. In this day and age, too many kids play too many video games and they have the need to be entertained at all times. The patience of searching for Walleyes can become mundane for them and a lot of them don’t have the patience to watch a slip bobber. This is where Ole Whitey can take center stage. Find a school of White Bass shallow and that same kid that was ‘bored’ five minutes ago can have cast after cast entertainment.
The North Dakota Whopper Club for White Bass is 3 pounds and there are actually quite a few of these sized fish in Devils Lake. Nothing better than getting a kid a Whopper Patch at a young age.
Today’s Excursion
Saturday and Monday we went West, yesterday we went East, today we decided to cut her right down the middle and fish the main bay.
Started out great with 2 20-inch walleyes, then we had a little wind switch and our big fish bites and follows came to an abrupt end. Probably should have left but felt had too much time invested in the spot and tried to get them to go again and they wouldn’t. Always a learning experience on the Big Devils. Hot Steel and Purpledescent in #7 Scatter Raps in 1-4 feet of water. Water temps off of the main bay are still a little low, topped out at 64.5 when we left so need the main lake to warm a little.
Good Luck out there.
