High river makes for high times
Before tackling trash, it was time to hit bass
ARKANSAS RIVER — In the days leading up to the annual Bayou Meto Wildlife Management Area cleanup, George Cochran said the Arkansas River is “on fire.”
Cochran and I always sneak in a fishing trip before the cleanup, and he said that bass fishing was excellent on the Arkansas River.
It was because of the high water. When heavy current flows down the river, it lowers the water temperature, oxygenates the water, stirs up a lot of food and otherwise creates ideal fishing conditions. High water also flows into the backwater areas. Bass orient to structure that shelters them from the current — such as inside points on jetties, wing dams and revetments — where they can ambush prey without wasting energy.
That’s opposite of how it usually is in late summer, when the Arkansas River is low and slow. The water is relatively clear, and bass are active only in the early morning and late evening.
“You can catch them off rocks early, but the rest of the time you have to try to find them suspended in deep water off dropoffs and that sort of thing,” Cochran said. “The fishing can be good if you can find them, but finding them is 95 percent of the battle. High water makes that part of it a lot easier.”
We launched Cochran’s 17-foot aluminum Ranger bass boat Aug. 30 at Little Bayou Meto Park and made a short run upriver to the jetties downstream from Lock & Dam No. 3. Cochran prefers an aluminum Ranger in this environment because it’s lighter and runs shallower than his fiberglass bass boat.
That was even more important on this day because the water was falling and was shallower than when he fished there a few days before. We ran aground at the first backwater inlet, but finally found a passage that was barely deep enough.
We tied on square-billed crankbaits. Mine was a shadcolored Luck-E-Strike, and Cochran used a chartreuse store brand from Academy Sports and Outdoors. His had a rattle inside, and it seemed to make a difference.
The minimum length limit for largemouth bass on the Arkansas River is 15 inches, and we both hooked and landed plus-size keepers on our first casts. They were on the downstream side of a passage in an interior revetment, but they were in the middle of the inlet and not on points. We floated through the passage to the downstream backwater and continued catching keepers casting the other direction.
When that bite cooled, we went to the next passage connecting the side pool to the main river. Water flowed out of the pool, so bass were on the outside points and on the outside rocks in the middle of the inlet. We caught plus-sized keepers there, too, as well as at the next inlet. We also got some hard strikes that didn’t hook. Cochran finally caught one of those fish, a magnum size white bass, one of the biggest I’ve seen. I caught its twin shortly after.
“We could probably sit here and catch those things all day if we used smaller crankbaits,” Cochran said.
The crankbait bass bite faded as the sun rose, but we found they would still bite Texas-rigged soft plastic lures. I broke off a big bass on the hookset with a red pumpkin Yum Craw Papi. It was the only Craw Papi I had, but I continued catching them with a black pumpkin Zoom trick worm. Cochran caught even more fish with a junebug Zoom trick worm.
We did not catch any bass on the interior walls of the revetments with crankbaits, but we did catch them with the worms. They were smaller bass, though, and few were keepers.
“You have to use a crankbait to catch the big ones,” Cochran said, “but you also have to use what works.”
We ended the outing at about 10 a.m. We caught 23 fish, including 11 keeper largemouths and the two big white bass. We also released several 14-inch Kentucky bass.
It certainly wasn’t what one expects from the Arkansas River this time of year.