Hybrid Bass Fishing

[DrAloha]

I find hybrid bass really interesting.  Yesterday, we had unseasonably warm weather with strong SSW winds before today's drastic cold front.  Two years ago, I found that when the wind is blowing like that in the fall, winter, and early spring, I could run into schools of hybrid bass while bank fishing with crankbaits. 

 

This is a large oxbow lake with several miles of south-facing shoreline. Sure enough, the hybrid bass were there yesterday (only caught three-- usually catch closer to 10 or so).  I can't believe this pattern-- it's such a large lake, it seems akin to finding a needle in a haystack matching these conditions to our one little speck of shoreline. 

 

With that being said, I have some questions.  Where do these bass go during the summer?  Do you think they just so happen to be concentrated at my dock when these conditions are right? Or do you think they would be lined up along the entire south facing shore?  How dense do these schools get?  I imagine there is some concentration of bait fish they are feeding on-- but I've yet to see large schools of shad like I sometimes do. 

[jimmyjoe]

  

2 hours ago, DrAloha said:

Where do these bass go during the summer? 

   Simple answer - anywhere they want. Less simple answer - wipers (or hybrid or Cherokee bass) are movers. They travel. They don't have a territory the way LMB do. Putting it another way - if they DO have a territory, it can be miles long and miles wide.

   Keep in mind that my experience with them comes from the rivers in the Midwest, not the lakes.

2 hours ago, DrAloha said:

  Do you think they just so happen to be concentrated at my dock when these conditions are right?

   Sure. That's a principle that applies to all fish.

2 hours ago, DrAloha said:

Or do you think they would be lined up along the entire south facing shore? 

   No.

2 hours ago, DrAloha said:

How dense do these schools get? 

   How do you measure "density"? The schools I've seen personally are about 100-200 feet long (usually less), and about 30-50 feet wide. But again, that's in the river. I'm a shorecaster, so the only time I come in contact with them is when they're corralling baitfish close to the shoreline or (if I'm lucky) when they're following a white bass school and picking off leftovers. What that school would look like in open water, I don't exactly know.

2 hours ago, DrAloha said:

  I imagine there is some concentration of bait fish they are feeding on-- but I've yet to see large schools of shad like I sometimes do. 

  Shad + wipers = dinner is served! Maybe that's why you don't see so many right now. But you will. Shad reproduce like crazy. Wipers are sterile.      jj

[Bluebasser86]

Wipers are very nomadic. They roam in schools, usually offshore during the summer, following schools of baitfish wherever they go. They're eating machines, so they'll never be far from the food.

 

Fall brings the schools of baitfish closer to the shorelines, with it the wipers. It's possible that they're scattered all down the shoreline, or maybe you're just very lucky and your dock sits right on "the spot" that they've chosen to feed. There's a local lake I can only catch them during the late fall period. I can mark them all around, but there's one spot that's "the spot" where they feed for some reason, I've caught them nowhere else.

 

The schools seem to shrink down in the fall when they move shallow, hunting more in small wolf packs instead of the huge offshore schools that can be hundreds and thousands of fish.