quoting myself from corpusfishing on the topic
bulldog1935 wrote:after the crowds dissipate from the white bass run, there will be harems of a single large male with smaller females waiting to ripen.
They're harder to catch because the girls do everything he does, and he's hard to impress.
I catch them with a sinking line cast straight down, my small whistler, slowly bottom bouncing, and even crawling on the bottom. They will follow, and pick it up from the bottom when it's sitting still.
You don't need bright colors - it's the mud-ball that gets their attention.
This is your best chance of catching a 4-y-o male, 19-21"
I've caught 5 of them in my life.
The mud ball thing works for trout and big bass. On clear hill-country flagstone, I've watched 5-10-lb bass follow the mud balls from a tiny fly and slam their head sideways on the bottom 4 or 5 times trying to eat it. We even got it on camera on the episode of KT Diaries where I took KT hill country fishing.
In fact, any time during the white bass run, when no one is catching fish, try this technique, and you'll be the only one catching fish. My favorite line for this is Teeny T-130, and it's very easy to shoot this line out 70' with only one back-cast.
pm your e-mail, and I'll send you the slide show pdf - just keep in mind it's aimed at the hill country, but still good information about how to fish for white bass, and the fish itself.
I like white-bass fishing with a multiplier, because white bass will often follow all the way in and take the fly at your feet. A good multiplier will get all that working line back on the reel and out of the way in 3-4 seconds.
That said, people use weighted flies, sinking leaders, sink tips - all offered in the white bass talk I've given a few times - all of those approaches have a built-in hinge - but a full sinking line like a Teeny T130 makes the straightest possible line from your rod tip to the hook point.
They're designed differently from a floating fly line and for a different purpose. The teeny T-line is a sinking shooting head spliced to a fine floating running line (which also keeps all that working line from sinking to your feet).
They cast like a shotgun (actually shoot) with the least possible false-casting to build up line speed. You don't have to work like a one-armed paper hanger to cast 70'
Cast distance is Everything in white bass fishing, because the fish follow forever, often waiting to your feet to pick up the fly.
For anyone who may decide to buy a reel spool and a Teeny line, keep in mind the diameter is so small they only take up 1/8" or less on a reel spool - buy copious backing to fill up the spool the rest of the way.
I also fish Teeny's 4' tapered leaders, attached to the line using a Zap splice, and add up to 18" tippet to the leader.
As Kirk said, fishing deep, you begin everything with a roll cast to get your rig up to the surface. With a Teeny line, you can usually shoot from a single back-cast, and shouldn't ever need more than one false cast to bring up line speed and shoot.
Fishing a TS-250 salt line in the surf one day, I consistently cast 140'.
these are just the 2-y-o males - I released everything else
I let my friends fillet from this stringer, too, and while they were doing that, caught the other 4 for my limit.