When Jack alerted us white bass had started their spring run, Jim and I wasted little time making plans to go. With the dogwood in full bloom and combined with an opening day turkey hunt, it was spring at its finest. As it turned out, chilly weather did little to cool our enthusiasm. Not even when it fell to my lot to drag boats over shallow rocky shoals while wading in increasingly frigid air. It was hard to complain after the fishing started.
Missouri impoundments stocked with white bass offer unique stream fishing during spring spawning runs. Jack Rowland, manager of Green Mill Campground on the Little Niangua River East of Climax Springs, proved why one blustery day some years ago.
Jim Low, Missouri Department of Conservation Director of Information Services, his partner John Stabbot and I were guests at Green Mill Campground on J Road. Jack Rowland and Cocoa, an Australian Shepherd, were our hosts. Jack steered his V-bottom up narrow channels above Green Mill with Cocoa navigating while balanced on a gunwale. A canoe trailed silently behind on a long tether, its pilot steering gently with a paddle now and then.
We found male white bass stacked around Little Niangua gravel bars. Once, Jack landed three fish in as many casts. John and I struggled to keep up but managed to string our share too. Jim’s hefty stringer hung off the trailing canoe.
Dogwood blooming, morels pushing out of leaf litter and white bass spawning up feeder streams of Ozark impoundments are strong signs of Spring. Yet we wore jackets and sweaters and vowed to put gloves and snow mobile suits on our Easter lists. The temperature had fallen into the mid 40s with winds gusting to 30 mph. Wind chill tested our resolve.
White bass (Morone chrysops) are members of the sea bass family. Pflieger’s “Fishes of Missouri” states they were formerly abundant only in the Mississippi River and its tributaries. Increasingly large gizzard shad populations encouraged stocking white bass in Missouri impoundments that offered acceptable spawning tributaries. Namely, ones with clear flowing water interspersed with gravel bars, riffles and deep pools.
Pflieger writes major white bass spawning runs from the Mississippi occur in the Salt and Cuivre rivers. The North Fork River hosts white bass runs out of Lake Norfork. I recall memorable past spring white bass spawning runs up Swan Creek and Beaver Creek out of Bull Shoals.
White bass school in groups composed of one sex during this event. Pfleiger states males mature first and move into the tributaries initially. Females seek deeper water near the spawning grounds. About a month after males move up the tributaries, females follow.
According to Pflieger, spawning usually completes within 5 to 10 days after females begin to spawn. He states, “The eggs are very small and a single large female may produce nearly a million eggs in one season.”
Pflieger credits white bass, during years of peak abundance, with 40% or more of fish creeled in various Ozark reservoirs.
We eventually beached an island about three quarters of a mile above the campground and cast riffles on either side. Jack had us cast Tiny 
Torpedoes (forward hooks removed) with 18 inch leaders trailing sixteenth or thirty second ounce jigs tied to the back hook.
The topwater lure floated the jig above the rocky bottom. Twitching the former firmly every few feet imparted erratic action to the jig resembling wounded prey as the river‘s current propelled it downstream.
We also caught fish retrieving against the current - twitching it back. Lure and jig produced best when showing lots of white color on them. Occasionally, fish struck the topwater lure instead of the trailing jig.
The boats were dragged over shallow riffles as we proceeded upstream. Since it was my lot to handle this chore while the others walked the bank, I wore Jack’s borrowed chest waders. After reaching the island, I spent a pleasant interlude wading and casting pools further upstream. The draft was too shallow to drag the boats over these rocky shoals.
A lack of boats and bank fishermen gave an illusion of remoteness off Missouri’s busiest boating impoundment. It soon became obvious few white bass had traveled above the riffles guarding the island.
With a solitary fish on a trailing stringer, I waded back to where the others lorded it over me. Their stringers were heavier but their level of enjoyment reached no higher plane than mine. (This was before wind chill lowered my body temperature into a region loosely referred to as hypothermia.)
Jack used a unique homemade anchor. He welded a disc from farm machinery to an old iron window sash centered on the concave side of the disk. He then cut holes in it with a blow torch to reduce water resistance when pulling it up.
The thin blade readily bit into gravel shoveling rock onto the disc and holding us against the current. It enabled us to fish various pools drifting back down river from the island with the boat held stationary against the current.
Low trailed in the canoe dragging a small anchor that easily anchored it in the current. The competition between boats was noticeably vocal and congenial. Cocoa refereed all disputes and her decision was final. She said so. The cold air shocked our lightly clad bodies but frostbite was forestalled by fishing action that kept blood coursing at a feverish pitch.
As we drifted back downstream, we found several anglers wading the pool under J Road=s Little Niangua bridge just above Green Mill=s campground. Stringers hooked to chest waders trailed in the current behind them. A prominent display of white teeth framed wide grins while chattering from wind chill.
Heavy stringers do that to you. They force grins from clenched teeth while wading windy frigid waters with wind chill threatening to lock up every joint in your protesting body. But, each fish keeps you hanging on till the stringer fills.
Another name for it is temporary insanity.