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White bass are showing up around the harbors and inlets at UL. Caught a mess last night; they dont seem to be really in the "hit anything" mode like in years past, but seem to be on the take pretty well for smaller jigs. I did pretty well on small mimic minnows, chartreuse/white stingers, and smaller curly tails. Seemed like they were down a little deeper, holding towards the bottom.
Great time to take a kid fishing! If a kid gets into a mess of active Whities, they'll be hooked for life!
See attached pics; I stopped at about 10-15 fish,dont want to be filleting longer than I'm fishing.
Tubedude, the vast majority were males; don't remember seeing anything like mature eggs. These fish seem a little more stout than last year; still the typical dimunitive UL Whitie, but maybe not as stilted as last year....
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[#0000FF]Good to hear you got enough for dinner. They are ready but hold off until water temps reach 65 on a regular basis...so the eggs will hatch.
The larger females tend to stay away from all the lustful males until things are just right. But a couple of warm days next week should bring them in too. Typically they start the mambo about the first of May but with unsettled weather it can stretch out a while. And with low inflow levels and lack of rocks around the low-water shoreline there are not many places for them to spawn.
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Went back on Saturday to find it all shut down. Very few fish being caught Saturday....looks like they have moved on or up or out...
Warmer temps will most likely kick it off again in the near future however.
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[#0000FF]Water temps play a big role in how active the white bass are during the spawn period. I have had a lot of days when there was not a whiff of a whitie in the cooler water temps of morning. Then in the afternoon, after a few degrees improvement, it got wide open again.
This tends to spread out the spawn and some fish may not spawn until late May or early June...or not at all. I have caught egg carrying females long after the main spawn was over. All species are subject to disrupted spawns that leaves some fish with unexpended eggs. Those are usually reabsorbed but sometimes they just let 'em fly any old place and they contribute to the food base for smaller species...or bigger species like carp.
Because of low water and reduced spawning habitat there has been a relatively poor spawn the past couple of years. I hope enough of them get in a successful spawn this year to at least generate a decent year class for the next few years. Otherwise there will be a big gap in the sizes...with hardly any fish available in a couple of years.
But Utah Lake has been through a lot of up and down cycles. At the end of the last big drought, in 2004 there were very few white bass left and all the walleyes were skinny. Many walleyes died of starvation that winter. Then there was a big runoff that refilled Utah Lake in 2005 and the remaining few white bass brought off a great spawn. Within a couple of years we were loading up on them again.
Love that great line from Jurassic Park: "Nature will find a way."
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