Ouachita double play
Chance meeting results in year’s best fishing frenzy
My challenge on Thursday was to write a fishing story from a friend’s vague tip about white bass biting on a remote part of Lake Ouachita.
The tip led me to a part of the lake I’d never seen, so I had to rely on a map to find the general area. Unsure if I was even in the correct tributary, I probed the waters for about a mile with multiple lures until I reached water’s end. The tributaries are not supposed to end that abruptly, so I was certain I was misplaced. I motored back out to the big water and saw, to my astonishment, a guy fishing in a kayak.
“How did that guy get way out here?” I asked myself. “There isn’t an access anywhere near here.”
He was at least worth a photo, so I idled toward him. When I got near, he waved his arms wildly, not to shoo me away but to invite me closer.
“They’re biting like crazy over here!” the guy shouted. “Come over and get ya some!”
His name is Steve Dunlap of Hot Springs, a rabid kayak angler who fishes in kayak bass tournaments. He was amped because he qualified for the Kayak Bass Fishing (KBF) Championship April 2-5 on Lake Guntersville in Alabama, where he will compete for $75,000.
In fact, Dunlap was competing Thursday in a KBF online monthly tournament that ends March 21. Dunlap photographed every largemouth he caught on a KBF-approved measuring board and texted the image to an online weighin.
“I’m competing against Arkansas only,” Dunlap said. “I’m currently sitting in fifth place for the month.”
Dunlap said he had caught about a dozen good-size largemouth bass, about as many big white bass and a 23inch walleye. About that time, white bass started breaking around us. Dunlap’s rod arced as he set the hook. It was a largemouth bass that weighed about 3 pounds. His next cast hooked a female white bass bulging with eggs.
Dunlap caught those fish on a Little George knockoff, but he said he caught most of the fish earlier in the day on a shad-colored crankbait.
I had been throwing a small, jointed firetiger Rapala crankbait with no effect, so I switched to a small chartreuse swimbait on a
1 /4-ounce ballhead jig. A white bass smashed it at the boat just before I lifted the lure from the water. The next cast attracted a much bigger white bass that was almost bursting with eggs.
“You want to know what’s crazy?” Dunlap asked. “Yesterday, I was catching them about 2 miles that way. They came this far overnight.”
“They were probably here then, too, and they’re probably all the way up to the first shoal,” I said.
“Probably,” Dunlap said. “I’m marking all kinds of fish. They’re here, and then they’re gone.”
When the bite on the flat died, we moved out closer to the channel and resumed catching fish. I only caught white bass, but Dunlap caught an equal ratio of whites and largemouths.
Near the bank, a man in an expensive bass boat caught fish while listening to a compilation of greatest hits by the band Alabama. After that, he switched to Kid Rock and Sheryl Crow.
“That dude’s got eclectic taste in music,” I said.
“I’m waiting for him to break out the Coolio,” Dunlap said.
Dunlap, who retired as a sergeant first class from the U.S. Army, said he served five tours in Iraq as a mechanic. He said he suffered significant brain trauma from improvised explosive device detonations that, among other things, prevent him from being able to play guitar.
“When I was young, I wanted to play guitar really, really bad,” I said. “I practiced and practiced, and now I play guitar really, really bad.”
“Hah!” Dunlap howled. “People ask me what I do with all my time now that I’m retired. I tell them I fish. I don’t tell them what all I had to go through to get here.”
When the bite at the channel ebbed, we tried fruitlessly to find fish moving back and forth across the flat. I lamented having arrived for the tail end of what sounded like a phenomenal day of fishing.
“There was a lot more wind earlier in the day blowing against that bank over there,” Dunlap said, pointing to a place about three quarters of a mile distant. “A bunch of shad were stacked up, and there were fish all over it.”
Dunlap was game when I asked whether he wanted to give it an encore.
“You want to stash that kayak on the bank and ride over there with me?” I asked.
“Naw, man. I’ll just hold on to your boat and you can drag me over there with you.”
Dunlap’s kayak is a Native Titan, a short, squat fishing platform that’s stable enough for a tall person like Dunlap to fish standing. He has a Garmin electronics unit with sidescan and downscan imaging and a stern anchor. He has a landing net designed especially for that boat. Propulsion is by way of a pedal-powered propeller, which enables you to go forward and backward.
“I have a couple of Hobies,” I said. “I came really, really close to getting one like yours, but I really wanted a Hobie and I knew I wouldn’t be happy with anything else. But I have to say, man, this ‘yak of yours is the bomb.”
This pleased Dunlap immensely, and he exuberantly described all of the modifications he made. That’s a defining characteristic of kayak anglers. No matter how well conceived a factory boat is, we are genetically coded to customize it.
We started our kayak careers with Ascend kayaks, which I modified to rig with an electric motor and electronic graphics.
“I loved that boat except for one thing,” I said. “It’s real low to the water, and if I went across any kind of a chop, I got relentless spray in the face. Just crossing a small lake like Huckleberry would get you drenched.”
“Yep, I had the same experience,” Dunlap said. “This boat puts you above that for the most part.”
It took about five minutes to get to Dunlap’s bank at a fast idle, and the fish were indeed eager for an encore performance. Dunlap caught a chunky largemouth on the first cast, and my first cast with a Luck-E-Strike crankbait caught a white bass. I caught three more big whites while Dunlap continued alternating between largemouths and whites. The action lasted about 30 minutes.
“You can feel it getting a little cooler, and my sinuses tell me the pressure is dropping,” I said.
“Yep, I think it’s about done,” Dunlap said. “This rain coming in is probably going to mess it up, but let’s do it again sometime.”
That’s what I love most about fishing. It’s the easiest place in the world to make new friends.