Using Kokanee Gear to Catch White Bass at Utah Lake

When I’m out trolling for kokanee, I’ll often catch other species of trout, either rainbows or cutthroat trout mostly, but you know what I never seemed to catch? Bass. Granted, that’s probably because most bass don’t hang out in the depths or areas that kokanee salmon hang out at, but still, I was curious. So I went to Utah Lake while the white bass spawn was on to test different setups.

White Bass Fishing at Utah Lake

White bass fishing at Utah Lake is all action, and all fun. A friend of mine said, when the bite is hot, you’re catching a fish with every cast. He’s not wrong. It wasn’t quite that hot for me. I caught fish on my first two casts, but after that it took about 2-3 casts to get a fish on average. When white bass spawn, they leave a lake or reservoir and head up streams and rivers, kind of like how salmon spawn, but they don’t turn color and they don’t get mushy. In fact, white bass have a pretty firm flesh, making them really nice for making fish nuggets or fish tacos.

Throwing the Tackle Box at The White Bass

So I went out during the spawn and I threw the tackle box at them. People use the term, throwing the tackle box at them, to usually explain that they’ve tried everything because the fish weren’t biting. But these fish were definitely biting, so I took the opportunity to try a lot of different gear just to experiment. Why not? I tried a variety of jigs and lures. After I tried a few I thought- what about kokanee lures. I write for a kokanee website, so I’ve always got a bunch of kokanee gear in my tackle box, so I tried out some combos.

What Kokanee Gear Worked

Spinners were working, so I tried out some wedding ring spinners. The reds and the greens seemed to work out ok, but I noticed that the shorter jigs, lures, and spinners were doing better. Most of the kokanee lures were much longer. I didn’t try out any squid micro hoochies, but I’m betting those would have worked better than the wedding rings.

What Kokanee Gear Didn’t Work for White Bass

Kokanee dodgers didn’t work at all. I wasn’t terribly surprised by this. Most dodgers would be about as big as some of these white bass. I put on my very smallest dodger, about a 1.5″ long silver dodger, but didn’t get any hits with it.

Gulp Maggots also weren’t a winner. I put some on the hook of the wedding ring, and the fish just stopped biting. I’m thinking this could be related to the size of the lure at that point, but the trust pink gulp maggot was a turn off.

Best Lures for White Bass

The very best lure I was using were little rubber jigs on a jig head. Orange caught the most, but white was a close second. Other small spinners also worked well. If you don’t have a lot of lures, these fish are also kind of cannibals, so if you can get your hands on one, you can use it as cut bait, and these little fish love it.