Discovering the Feisty Spring Bass of The Yadkin River
"We always thought of the Yadkin as a prime spot for catfish, overlooking it as a bass fishery. Boy, were we wrong."
A welcome surprise...
I grew up in Tobaccoville, NC just about 3 miles (as the crow flies) from the Yadkin River. We always thought of the Yadkin as a prime spot for catfish, overlooking it as a bass fishery. Boy, were we wrong.
My first experience with bass fishing the Yadkin River took place in Wilkesboro, NC where the Kerr Scott Reservoir's dam rushes in to create the spillway. It was roughly late spring of 2016 when I trekked around the trail that circles the bottom of Kerr Scott's dam and tested a few lures in the churning water.
A coworker's husband had recommended the area, as he was a local in the nearby town of Lenior, coincidently where my mother had grown up.
My 1/8 ounce Rooster Tail inline spinner produced a couple of moderate-sized bluegill and an eater green sunfish, but I hadn't hooked up with anything worth writing home about (but somehow they made it into my blog). I began slowly working my way down the rocky river bank until I encountered Fish Dam Creek.
It was here that I cast a white Rooster Tail with a silver blade into the middle of the river and let it sink a good 3 or 4 seconds before starting my retrieve. Maybe halfway to the bank, I felt a familiar "thump" and the reel screamed at me.
My drag was too loose, so there's that.
I don't know why my tackle was so light on this fishing trip, I was set up for panfish and nothing much larger. After adjusting my drag a dozen times and playing the fish for probably 3 minutes, I finally landed a hybrid bass that I estimate to be roughly 2.5 pounds.
It was a fantastic fight and I was just as surprised as I was happy with the fish.
I had a photo of this fish at one point, but I cannot find it anywhere. To be fair, there's been a few fishy photos taken by my phone since then. But hey, this isn't even the real story here!
Revisiting the Yadkin 8 Years Later...
About 8 years later I set out with a different spinner to explore the Yadkin River, but this time I stayed at home in the Winston-Salem area.
I shut off the truck about 11 miles upriver from Tanglewood and prepared to get my boots muddy. After losing approximately 17,000 inline spinners to snags over the course of my angling tenure, I discovered a creative alternative: mini spinnerbaits.
Of course, a semi-weedless inline spinner is well within the realm of possibility, they just didn't have any at the King Wal-Mart.
In case you didn't know, the wire arm of a spinnerbait helps it glance off of structure, reducing the likelihood that its single hook will get snagged. This is a characteristic that your typical inline spinner just doesn't posses, as most inline spinners have an unguarded treble hook.
My bait of choice for that outing in late April of 2024 was Booyah's Micro Pond Magic spinnerbait in the Locust pattern (featured above). I chose this lure based on my vast knowledge of how fish react to color patterns due to seasonal forage and also because it was available at my local Walmart.
Mainly the Walmart thing.
This lure features a completely blacked-out single Colorado blade which doesn't have to be large because this is a mere 1/8 ounce lure.
I started off casting near the bridge pilings, maybe 25 feet upriver from the boat ramp. My thinking was that their disruption of the current would create a strategic hangout for predatory fish, and while that might sound really good, it didn't produce a single bite.
I meandered downriver despite the heavily forested bank.
There were laydowns everywhere and only a few places actually allowed me to get to the river's edge with enough clearance to cast. I targeted a large tree trunk that was only partially submerged and was surprised when a brownish bass erupted from underneath to inhale my spinnerbait.
It wasn't the size of the hybrid I'd caught by the spillway, but it was a bass and it fought surprisingly hard for its size. I repeated this feat a few more times with the same basic strategy: toss the baby Booyah at fallen timber and retrieve it slowly.
I probably caught a bass every 10-12 casts.
None of the fish were big, in fact some of them were a little disappointing, but I was nonetheless surprised that I was catching bass out of the Yadkin River with any measure of predictability.
As I've done some reading and research and even been fortunate enough to speak with several outdoor enthusiasts who are much more familiar with the Yadkin than I am, I've learned that smallmouth, spotted and largemouth bass are not unusual catches for the river. There are even areas of the river known to produce stripers!
I know I'll probably catch a lot of criticism for never realizing until now that the Yadkin River is capable of being a decent bass fishery (especially taking into consideration my proximity to it growing up), but all I can do now is move forward with my newfound knowledge.
I just had two soft plastic bait molds arrive in the mail today and I'm ordering some spoon blanks here shortly. I think I'll also start working on designing a semi-weedless inline spinner.
Spring Breakthrough of '25, here I come.