Bream or bass?
Decision an easy one for fishermen
Mike Romine of Mabelvale faced a dilemma.
He traveled into an Arkansas River side-water in search of bream, and he found them.
“There were bream beds everywhere,” he said. “It looked like the moon with all those little beds scoured out.”
The panfish were hungry, too, and big. Romine has big hands. The bream were bigger.
There was a problem, though.
“Everytime we’d get to working on the bream, the bass would start tearing things up along the bank,” Romine said. “They were making these big wakes, and you could see their backs above the surface chasing shad and stuff. After awhile, we just said, ‘To heck with it. We had to get us some of that.’ ”
Big bream or big bass? The decision was easy because the bass were 2-4 pounds apiece. He caught and released a dozen, as well as about 30 big bream and a grinnel. Where? Romine was vague about the location, but specificity wasn’t important. While bream are spawning, bass are nearby to pick off the fry and smaller male bream that are guarding the nests. You can get in on the action right now on the Arkansas River, lakes Conway, Overcup, Brewer, Beaverfork, Waldron City Lake and many others around the state.
One of my favorite places for the bream-bass double play right now is in Palarm Creek. Getting there requires a long run up the Arkansas River from the Two Rivers ramp below the Interstate 430 bridge. If the river is high and fast, getting in the creek can be tricky. You have to nose into the slack water at the mouth of the creek and then goose the throttle to prevent the stern from going perpendicular. Once in the creek, you’ll find a veritable target gallery of fallen logs and stickups,
Right now, you can catch bluegills by tossing a cricket under a bobber next to any kind of woody cover. You can use a cane pole or a fly rod with a fixed length of line, a small hook and a light split shot.
as well as cut stumps below the waterline. Bream are everywhere if you want to dangle worms or crickets under bobbers, but I catch some big bass with a Gene Eiland Fish Tail. It’s a soft plastic lure with a solid, tubular body and a profile of a small bream molded onto the tail. Though no longer made, it was popular on the Red River during its heyday in the early 1990s around Shreveport, and it still works very well any place bream are spawning.
This month, bream will be on their spawning beds during the full moon, when water temperatures are in the 70s. You can find bream beds in depths of 2-6 feet in most places. A bed is a small, saucer-like depression on the bottom. In a good bedding area, the nests are about a foot apart and are often so numerous that they look like a pockmarked moonscape. A good pair of polarized sunglasses will help you see the beds, as well as the big bull bream guarding them.
Finding bass is easy. Just look for surface eruptions from bass tearing into schools of panicked baitfish.
SMALL LAKES Some of the best bream fishing in Arkansas this month is in the public fishing lakes owned by the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. Two of the best are lakes Conway and Overcup. Lake Conway is on the outskirts of Conway. Lake Overcup is near Morrilton. Both are fairly shallow, with an abundance of standing timber and fallen timber in the shallow water near the bank.
Right now, you can catch bluegills by tossing a cricket under a bobber next to any kind of woody cover. You can use a cane pole or a fly rod with a fixed length of line, a small hook and a light split shot. You’ll catch bream in a range of sizes, but the key to consistently catching big ones is to cover a lot of water.
Other small waters that will be hot for bream this month are Cox Creek Lake near Sheridan, Beaverfork Lake near Conway and Brewer Lake, also near Morrilton.
CREEKS May is a prime month for float-fishing for smallmouth bass on mountain streams, but you’ll also have a great time catching longear sunfish and Ozark bass and shadow bass.
The longear, or pumpkinseed, is smaller than a bluegill. It’s one of the most colorful freshwater fish with a mottled appearance of orange, gold, turquoise and gray. When defending a bed, they will slam small, ultralight crankbaits, and they fight hard. In really clear water, like the Caddo River or Sylamore Creek, you can sight fish for big pumpkinseeds on the nest.
If you’re really lucky, you’ll get into a mess of Ozark bass. We call them goggle-eyes and warmouths, but it’s a thick bodied sunfish with bronze, black mottled skin. They’ll hit crankbaits and soft plastic baits, especially those resembling crawdads. You’ll find them in deep pockets next to submerged rocks. They don’t fight hard, but they are delicious.
You’ll find green sunfish in the same places. They are a bit more pugnacious than other bream and readily hit lures that are as big as they are.
BIG RESERVOIRS Most anglers don’t go to big lakes like Ouachita, Beaver and Degray for bream, but those who do find zero competition for some surprisingly good fishing.
You have to go deep for big bream in these waters. Beach your boat near the mouth of a shoreline pocket where the water drops to about 12-15 feet. Toss a cricket under a slip bobber and let it dangle a foot or so off the bottom, and you’ll catch a bluegill or a redear like clockwork.
These pockets hold surprising numbers of bluegill. Small fish are high in the water column, and they’ll hit a slow-falling bait before it can reach the big fish near the bottom. To get past them, use heavier weight to make the bait fall faster into the zone where the big fish wait. At Lake Ouachita, the old Navy Landing is a good place to start. At Greers Ferry Lake, try the shallows behind Shiloh Marina. At Beaver Lake, Indian Creek is a virtual bream nursery.
Be sure to bring your bass tackle. As Romine knows, a school of marauding largemouths can turn a good trip to great.