Dog days of spring arrive in Kansas

The Westie begs to release the fish back into the river.
By BRENT FRAZEE
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
VALLEY FALLS, Kan. -- The dog days of spring have arrived for Clyde Holscher and his fishing partner, Brody.
The white bass have started making their spawning run up tributaries of major reservoirs in northeast Kansas. And that means Holscher, a guide, has his boat on the water constantly.
It also means that his "fish pointer" -- his 2-year-old Westie, Brody -- gets to go fishing until he is just dog tired.
"Every time I have the boat hooked up and Brody sees it, he wants to go," Holscher said as he launched his boat on the Delaware River, a tributary of Perry Lake. "He just loves being out here.
"He gets excited when I'm catching fish. And he thinks he has to be a part of it.
"Just wait a minute. You'll see."
Minutes later, Brody was up to his same old tricks.
The second Holscher hooked a fish and his fishing rod bowed sharply, Brody leaned far over the side of the boat and stared at the point where the line entered the murky water of the Delaware River. The suspense was killing him.
Once Holscher swung the white bass into the boat, Brody took a quick lap around the boat, then jumped up and down, begging Holscher to let him release the fish.
Holscher handed Brody the white bass, and the dog clamped down, then dropped the fish back into the water.
"I think it's more gravity than anything," Holscher said with a laugh. "But Brody thinks he is releasing the fish, and that's what counts.
"He gets a kick out of being out here when the white bass are running."
Good-fishing sign
And he's usually a pretty good indicator of whether the fish are biting.
"My wife can always tell how the fishing was just by looking at Brody's face," Holscher said. "If he's a mess, she knows the fish were biting."
Brody was a mess last week. Not long after Holscher pulled up to one of his favorite spots on the Delaware River, he started catching fish. And Brody, dressed in his custom-made life jacket, was immediately busy handling the releases.
An hour or so into the trip, Holscher and I had caught 15 whites along rocky banks on the river. And Brody was starting to tire, taking a short rest between his duties.
"Give me a spinning rod with a red-head chartreuse jig at this time of the year, and I'm a happy man," said Holscher, 56, who runs the Guide Lines Guide Service out of Topeka, Kan. "I just live for that little 'tick' you feel at the end of the line when a white bass hits.
"The strike isn't real impressive. But once you set the hook, you're in for a fight.
"Pound for pound, you won't find a better fighting fish than a white bass."
Holscher, who prides himself in being a multispecies fisherman, chases white bass almost year-round. But he especially enjoys fishing for them at this time of the year, when the fish leave the reservoirs and make a spawning run up the rivers that feed the big bodies of water.
He has found success lately on the Delaware, fishing in the Valley Falls area, a point about as far as the white bass can run up river. But he also catches whites on the Dragoon (a tributary of Pomona Reservoir), the Wakarusa (Clinton), the Neosho (John Redmond) and the Marais des Cygnes (Melvern).
"Kansas has some exceptional white-bass fishing," Holscher said. "On a good day, it's not unusual at all to catch 50 to 75 fish at this time of the year.
"When the water temperature gets close to 50 degrees, that's when the run will reach its peak. That's when you can really catch the fish."
Prime fishing spots
Little ditches, bends, rocky banks and the mouths of little creeks flowing into the river are prime places to catch the white bass. But there are no absolutes, Holscher said. Some days, he also catches fish along muddy banks.
"The hard part is finding them," he said. "Once you locate them, you can usually catch them."
This year, the run started early. In fact, Holscher said the white bass were in the river all winter long. They started to move upstream with every warm front.
As usual, the good fishing has been interrupted by cold fronts, when the fish drop into holes and become inactive. But on the whole, there have been more good days than bad, Holscher said.
"By April Fools' Day, I can count on the white bass being in the river," Holscher said. "In northeast Kansas, the run will generally last until mid- to late April."