Hot weather brings out the bully in plentiful school bass

I have heard some bizarre stories about school bass through the years. Randy Dearman gets the prize for passing on the wildest tale of all.

You may have read about it before. Each time the subject of school bass comes up, I get the urge to tell about his freak encounter on Lake Livingston.

Photo by Matt Williams (enlarge photo) The best baits for catching school bass are those that best simulate the forage. A shad pattern Rat-L-Trap is ideal. Photo by Matt Williams (enlarge photo) School bass are prone to run in large gangs and are relatively easy to catch when a feeding frenzy is in progress.

Dearman worked as a full-time fishing guide on the popular East Texas lake throughout the 1970s and early 1980s. Livingston was bass factory in its hey day.

Dearman was at work one afternoon in a legendary area of the lake known as "The Jungle." The nickname came about because of the maze of standing timber left intact there before the lake was built. The safest way to navigate the thick woods was at idle speed, so you could pick and choose a path.

The guide idled to the interior of "The Jungle," where he had discovered a small opening in the woods formed by an old hay pasture.

All was quiet. The water was slick as glass, except for the occasional ripple of bait fish dimpling the surface. It didn't stay that way for long.

Dearman dropped his trolling motor and creeped toward the center of the pasture. Then, he grabbed his topwater rod and popped a silly question to his client, an elderly gent from up north.

"You ready to see some fish?" Dearman asked.

"Sure," the angler responded, copping a confused look of sorts.

Dearman then performed the unexpected. Rather can casting his topwater plug, he dropped to his knees, placed his rod tip in the water and began ripping it in tight circles.

"That guy looked at me like he thought I was crazy," Dearman recalled. "He asked what I was doing and I told him to watch and he would find out."

Within minutes, the slick surface erupted into a vicious blood bath. Tiny threadfin shad skittered helplessly across the surface as thick shouldered green fish picked them off at will.

The men capitalized on the feeding frenzy using chrome chuggers to simulate wounded or fleeing shad. Both anglers had limits in less than 30 minutes.

"The noise of the rod swishing around in the water spooked the shad and that got the bass stirred up," Dearman said.

The guide said there were times when he could accomplish the same task by jumping up and down on the front of the boat. The sounds of his feet slamming on the deck echoed throughout the water column, busted up the shad and got them moving.

"I can remember times when it would make the fish school all the way around the boat, especially back when the lake was new and chock full of bass," Dearman said.

Lake Livingston isn't the super star it once was, but school bass are still the same old bullies they always were. Based on my experiences, I look at schoolies as fine-tuned eating machines genetically programmed to chase, catch and kill, seemingly for the mere hell of it at times.

They can be gluttons at the dinner table, too. On several occasions I have witnessed schoolies stuff their bellies until full, then regurgitate the partially digested remains of bait fish to make room for more.

It is not just a largemouth bass thing, either. Open water bruisers such as white bass, hybrid striped bass and striped bass are prone to run in large gangs, as well.

Surface schooling occurs when the fish herd the shad to the surface where they can feed much more effectively. The surface acts as a boundary and the bait fish are vulnerable in that position, because there is no other place for them to go.

No one knows for certain what compels game fish to school. Texas Parks and Wildlife Department fisheries biologist Todd Driscoll of Jasper believes it could be linked to a couple factors.

"I think it is partly to do with where the shad are positioned in the water column," Driscoll said. "But probably the biggest factor has to do with the bass' high metabolic rate. The water temperatures are warm, the fish need more to eat and they are more willing to expend energy to go after the shad. You will occasionally see fish schooling on the surface year-round, but it seems to be the most pronounced during the summer and early fall."

The biologist thinks the surface schooling action anglers witness on the surface during the summer months represents only a small fraction of the actual schooling activity that goes down there from one day to the next.

"There is much more feeding activity that goes on below the surface and it happens a whole lot more often," he said.

Summertime schooling activity isn't just a Texas thing, either. In mid-June, Florida bass pro Scott Martin had a couple of unique encounters with sub-surface schoolies during FLW Tour event Fort Louden-Tellico lakes in Knoxville, Tenn.

During pre-tournament practice, Martin was reeling a shad pattern DD-22 crankbait over a shell hump when something big knocked slack in his 10-pound line. When he finally worked the fish beside the boat, he realized there was not one, but two 31/2-pound smallmouths playing tug-o-war with his lure.

"Right about then an even bigger one, probably a 41/2 pounder, swims up and starts trying to grab the bait," Martin said. "That fish wound up getting hooked on one of the trebles that was sticking out one of the other bass' mouth."

Martin didn't have a landing net in the boat, so there wasn't anything he could do with the trio of powerful bronzebacks dancing on the end of his line.

"It was pretty chaotic out there for about 10 seconds, until two of the fish finally got off."

Martin didn't return to the sweet spot until Day 2 of the tournament, this time with a FOX Sports Network camera boat on his tail. As he approached the area, he told the cameraman about what had occurred during practice.

"He looked at me like I was crazy," Martin said. "Then I fired a cast out there and my rod loaded up. I could tell right away it was a big fish."

Actually, there were two. One of smallmouths measured 19 inches. The other was a 15 incher. Martin netted both fish on film.

"The whole deal was pretty wild," Martin said. "I've caught lots of doubles in the past, but I had never caught a triple before now."

You never know with school bass. When the dinner bell rings, weird things are prone to happen.

Matt Williams is free lance writer based in Nacogdoches.