Bream bonanza
Pugnacious panfish great to catch, eat
Crappie fishing and bass fishing is waning in intensity, but bream fishing is nearing its peak.
Bream, a generic term for sunfish that includes bluegill, redear, longear and green sunfish, inhabit almost every body of water in Arkansas. They are the easiest fish to access, the easiest to catch from the bank, the easiest to catch on simply baits and truly are the “people’s fish.”
They are also delicious. My first big bream shootout occurred on a golf course pond when I was 8-years-old. I caught as many as I could drag home using a plain gold hook with no bait. It’s the only time I’ve seen fish bite a bare hook, and I assume it was because there wasn’t enough natural food in the pond.
Later, I graduated to bacon. Bream love it. You only need a small amount of bacon fat to swaddle a hook, with a tiny amount of lean. When a bream hits, it drives the bacon up the hook shaft. After unhooking the fish, simply rewrap the bacon on the hook and catch another one. That one little bacon bit will last all day.
Eventually I outgrew those young boy ways and desired to fish like an adult. That’s when I discovered the simple joy of dangling live crickets under a balsa slip bobber on a long pole. But my favorite method is to catch them fly fishing with popping bugs.
As much as we love to catch big bass, big crappie and big trout in Arkansas, every angler has a soft spot for bream. During the pandemic, for example, I fished the Buffalo River with Karl Schmuecker, general manager of Wapsi Fly in Mountain Home. Schmuecker, who has fished all over the world for everything worth catching, did not mind a bit that longear sunfish were the only things biting that day. He marveled over the longear’s exquisite beauty and fighting abilities that outpace its small size.
Right now, you can encounter schools of big bluegills in the shallows of any pond or lake. They encircle largemouth bass nests trying to get at the eggs. After the eggs hatch, they prey mightily on newly hatched bass fry and also crappie fry. You can find them around any thick aquatic vegetation like hydrilla, coontail and lily pads.
You will find bigger fish around cover in deeper water. They gather around sunken logs and tops. Forward facing sonar helps locate them.
On big lakes like Lake Ouachita and Beaver Lake, I catch a lot of bream in late spring and early summer at the bottom of deep coves. I use a 1/8-ounce Dipsey sinker on the terminal end of the line and a tiny treble hook on a dropper line. Big bream are on the bottom. The Dipsey sinker pulls your bait through the smaller fish hovering above to the big ones lurking below them.
The best fishing occurs during the full moon in June. That is said to be the peak of the bluegill spawn. If you miss it, they also spawn on the full moon in July and August.
Despite their abundance and willingness to bite, bream seem to have dipped in popularity in recent years. Maybe it’s because bass, crappie and trout get all the publicity. They are more challenging to catch, require a lot more technical prowess, and there’s a lot more information about how to catch them.
Bream fishermen take advantage of the bream’s obscurity to enjoy untapped fisheries all over the state. While sculling an aluminum flatbottom boat, you can dunk a worm or cricket right behind a bass angler fishing in a $100,000 rig without conflict.
EFFICIENT BREAM FISHING
While many bream fishermen use long cane poles to dunk crickets or worms into a bream bed from a distance, you can also cast to them with ultralight spinning gear. Either way, a big bream fights valiantly against light line and wispy rod. Kayaks allow you to get to a lot of bream cover you can’t reach with a bigger boat. A long pole is unwieldy for kayak fishing, but ultralight spinning gear is compact and efficient.
For most bream fishing situations, I use crickets or nightcrawlers. I catch more bream with crickets, which are cleaner to handle and are generally less hassle than worms. Nobody can dispute a worm’s bream-catching power, though.
In mid and late summer, I catch a lot of big bluegills on artificial lures, especially small floating Rapala minnows and Touchdown micro jigs, either 1/32- or 1/64-ounce. I’ve also caught a lot of bream with small inline spinnerbaits like those made by Mepps and Panther Martin.
When fishing with ultralight gear, it’s important to balance your terminal tackle. I use 4-pound test line and a No. 8 bream hook weighted with a tiny split shot attached 14-16 inches above the hook.
The most important part of this rig is the bobber. Many anglers use too big of a bobber. A big bobber creates too much resistance. Instead of inhaling a cricket or worm, excessive resistance will make a bream nibble a bait off the hook. You’ll lose a lot of bait and not catch as many fish.
Instead, I use thin balsa pencil floats and a bobber stopper to govern depth. It lies on its side. When a fish strikes, it stands erect before the fish pulls it underwater.
Catching bream on popping bugs with a fly rod is one of the most exciting summer fishing experiences our state offers. An elderly uncle taught me how to do it when I was 13. I spent the summer with him on his houseboat at Brodie Lake, an Arkansas River oxbow not far from the David Terry Lock & Dam. My uncle taught me how to scull an aluminum flatbottom boat and cast popping bugs under low bushes containing what he called catalpa worms. When it got too hot for him to fish, he retired to air conditioning and left me to spend many blissful days of solitary fishing.
A popping bug is a tiny surface chugger with a hair trailer and rubber legs, but it is murderous on summer bluegills and redears with a 3-weight fly rod. Bream hit them furiously, and it’s by far the most challenging and most fun way to catch them.
Bream are very tasty, but it takes commitment and patience to make a meal. Even the biggest bluegill makes a small fillet, and it takes a lot of these to satisfy a family. Coat the fillets lightly in cornmeal mixed with generous amounts of salt, black pepper and garlic. They are best deep fried, and they do not benefit from additional condiments like ketchup or tartar sauce. A couple of drops of Tabasco sauce doesn’t hurt, though.