I spent a bit over the past week now targeting white bass in the Upper Coosa River. Now that spring is in full swing here in north Georgia the white bass are migrating upriver to their spawning grounds. This fishing event only lasts a couple of months every spring and has anglers coming out in numbers to the Lock and Dam here on the upper Coosa. After a cold winter, people are wanting to get into a hot bite of white bass and take home a bag of fillets at the end of the day.
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The Coosa River up here is fed by two rivers, the Oostanaula River and the Etowah River, they converge in Downtown Rome to form the Coosa. These rivers have their flow controlled by hydroelectric dams that release water whenever power generation is needed or just to lower the water level in their reservoirs. This makes for the level of the Coosa to fluctuate a great deal, sometimes going up and down 5+ feet in a few hours. So even though I was fishing the same part of the river for the week, where the fish were holding and how they were biting changed day to day. For the week I fishing a 7ft St. Croix Trout Series Spinning Rod with a small Daiwa spinning reel spooled up with 6lb test braid. Using a double jig-rig tipped with some soft plastic crappie baits, fished with or without a bobber depending on the conditions
Early on in the week, the weather conditions were a bit cooler, a front had pushed through with some rain the night before. The river was higher and pretty muddy with the water being released upstream. The bite was pretty consistent on a double jig rig fished under a bobber though. For the white bass nothing of really good size was being caught though for the first couple of days. Though crappie were being caught in decent numbers as a very welcome bycatch.
However, just after a couple of cold days, the weather warmed up, with some days easily reaching up into the 70s and 80s. These days the flow rate of the river was dropped a good deal, with clarity starting to get a bit better. Still a bit turbid but now more green than muddy than the days before. With the water level dropping the new spots on the lock had formed some eddies that were holding a better grade of white bass. Right near the front of the lock on the riverside, there is an eddy that forms when the water level is just right. Dropping my jigs into that eddy and hopping them on the bottom produced rather consistently but also cost me several jigs to the snags in this hole. Once the bite slowed down though I went over to a small creek mouth near the lock hoping that the bass might be stacked there positioning to move up the creek to spawn. Instead, I was greeted by some small crappie though.
Now after having to be away for a few days for an event, I finally got back to the river. This time the river was back up a good bit with there had been some rain the day before, which was the day to be there. Most anyone who was fishing the day before had limited out. But today it had slowed down some again, but the fish were getting a bit bigger. I had gotten here later than I had planned and missed most of the morning bite but managed to get a couple of nice white bass. I missed several strikes as well, when finally right before I was about to call it a day I caught a nice little striped bass, which gave me a good run for my money on the little St. Croix trout setup. Not needing a ton of fish for dinner, I kept the two white bass and gave the striper away to someone who wanted it and called it a day.
I took the two white bass over to the cleaning station the Lock and Dam park has set up near the top end of the lock and got to filleting them up. Those two fish had plenty of meat to make for a nice fish dinner for two that night. I definitely recommend for anglers to come and try their hand at fishing for whitebass. If you have friends who are new to fishing or kids that are wanting to learn bring them and try. This is a pretty easy fishery that does not need a lot of fancy tackle to get into. Just because I was using a my nicer trout rod doesn’t mean you have to, a Zebco Dock Demon will be plenty to get the job done here if that’s all you got. Just remember if you do plan to go, go soon these guys probably will only be around till the end of April. So if you miss them you’ll have to wait till next year to get another shot.
