This North Louisiana lake is a jungle of standing timber, but it offers anglers solitude and plenty of bass action.
Saline Lake is located in the northcentral part of Louisiana approximately 6 miles northeast of Clarence. In fact, the lake is given the suffix “Clarence” to differentiate it from two other Louisiana lakes named Saline. This Saline Lake is approximately 7,600 acres in surface area, and is 1 mile wide and 11 miles long. It is heavily wooded, and is not a good choice for purely recreational boating. That’s bad news for water skiers and water-scooter jockeys.
But it’s exceptionally good news for fishermen.
The standing timber in the lake prevents high-speed hot-dogging, except for a few daredevils who occasionally risk their necks blasting along the main channel where the water is relatively clear. Still, there’s always the possibility of a floating log breaking loose from the flooded forest, imperiling the lower units of the outboards of the reckless.
There is a public launching area at the end of State Road 592 at the northeast part of the lake called Sand Point Launch. Farther upstream is another launching point called Goldona Launch, located at the LA 156 bridge crossing over Saline Bayou.
While the Goldona launch gives access to the pristine bayou, which has been designated a Louisiana Natural and Scenic River upstream of LA 156, most fishermen will be more interested in prospecting for largemouth bass in the main body of Saline Lake.
Chad Bowen is the North Louisiana regional director for the National Wild Turkey Federation. These days, he is so busy coordinating all of the NWTF fundraisers in his region that he doesn’t get to fish as much as he once did.
“If I get the chance, Saline Lake is still where I will go,” he said. “I grew up fishing at Saline, and it’s one of the best lakes in the state to be so little known.”
While the cypress-studded lake appears daunting to many anglers, Bowen is right at home on Saline’s dark waters.
“If you put in at Sand Point Launch, you’d better be careful,” he said. “The public launching areas are way back in the trees. Once you get out of sight of the landing, you can get lost. If you come back to the launch after dark, finding it is hopeless unless you have a GPS or spend some time learning your way around in the trees.”
Instead of using the public ramp, Bowen usually launches at Mulligan End Landing. Paying a small fee to launch is better than negotiating the maze of trees. Besides, it gives quicker access to some of the best fishing.
“There’s a gas pipeline right in front of Mulligan End,” he said. “You can see where it crosses the lake because the trees were cleared.”
Bowen fished many tournaments at Saline. He fished with the Colfax Bass Club and Winnfield Bass Club, winning several club tournaments and placing in others. He also fished open and jackpot tournaments.
“On a decent day, I can catch a limit of bass without any trouble,” he said. “But catching 20 bass a day isn’t unusual.”
When he fishes at Saline Lake, Bowen heads straight for the pipeline. In his experience, it’s the best place to start.
“I prefer a pretty June day to fish the pipeline,” he said. “But I’ll take an overcast day. I’m going to start fishing at the gas pipeline a few hundred yards off the ramp where the pipeline crosses the main channel.”
Bowen begins fishing the edges of the pipeline right-of-way with soft plastics. When the pipeline right-of-way was cleared, mounds of earth and trees were piled on both sides of the right-of-way like windrows.
“The pipeline is underwater, and the cleared area is about 100 yards wide,” he said. “Fish edges where you can see it with Texas-rigged worms, and you can get a fast start on the fish.”
Outside the main channel and the pipeline right-of-way, the lake is covered with trees, and the trees are covered with Spanish moss. The lake bottom grows a bumper crop of submerged aquatics, and is a veritable maze of coontail and hydrilla.
The top of the lake is home to water hyacinth and filamentous algae, which forms a dense covering wherever the wind can’t reach it to keep it blown free of the surface. Bowen fishes his worms and jigs by “flipping” them into openings in the plant beds.
“For bass fishing, I use a 7-foot All Star flipping rod with a Shimano Curado baitcasting reel.” Bowen said. “I like a shorter 6-foot, 6-inch medium-heavy rod and a faster gear ratio reel for fishing buzz baits and spinnerbaits.”
If he gets to the lake before daybreak, Bowen usually has a rod rigged with a buzz bait. Early in the morning, bass will hit the buzz bait faster than any other lure on most days.
“I stick with the buzz bait until the sun comes up,” he said. “They usually quit biting topwater at the pipeline when it gets light. But sometimes they continue hitting it. If they do, I’ll let the fish tell me when to switch to a spinnerbait after they quit hitting the buzz bait.
“When the topwater bite tapers off I go to a spinnerbait with a single Colorado blade. I like to use a white or chartreuse spinnerbait. The spinnerbait is good to use back in the weeds.”
A spinnerbait works well for catching fish along the pipeline edges and back in the trees after sunrise. Bowen finds holes in the trees that were cleared for building duck blinds.
“You can get yourself lost back in there,” he said. “Unless you’re fishing the main river channel, an electronic depthfinder is useless. It’s a better idea to leave the depthfinder at home and bring your GPS.
“There are deeper holes along the river channel and in some places the pipeline is 10 or 12 feet deep. The deepest places are in the middle of the pipeline, but it can be as shallow as 2 or 3 feet at the edges. Most of the time, you are going to cast to visible cover because the lake is so shallow.”
For fishing what Bowen calls the “duck blind holes” and the blinds themselves, he switches to a jig.
“I fish where the stuff’s been cut down with a 3/8-ounce black, blue and amber Stanley jig with a black/blue craw worm trailer,” he said. “I flip it to the structure, let it rattle, then flip it to another piece of structure. If the jig doesn’t have a built-in rattle, I usually add one.
“My biggest bass at Saline Lake was caught on a jig. It weighed over 6 pounds. I’ve caught several that weight over 5 pounds on the jig. Some days I do 90 percent of my bass fishing with a jig. If the fish show me that’s what they want to bite, I won’t switch to anything else.”
After fishing the duck blind itself and the surrounding cut-down cover with a jig, Bowen switches to a crankbait.
“I fish the open holes around the duck blinds with a crankbait,” he said. “I like a gold/black back Rattlin’ Rogue. I also use some of the Bomber and Bandit crankbaits.”
As the day heats up, the action in the timber can slow down. That’s Bowen’s cue to head for the main channel.
“Sometimes the best action is along the river channel in June,” he said. “There are places where the channel is 20 to 25 feet deep. I use a jig or a Texas-rigged worm to fish the edges of the channel.”
Seeing schooling bass is always a possibility when fishing the river channel. The curves beginning at a quarter mile upstream from the pipeline are good places to look for schooling bass. Brewton’s Camp and Big Oak Island are also good places to look. The water down near the dam is a lot more open, and it’s also a good place to try some topwater fishing.
Topwater action with schooling bass can be excellent. Slug-Go worms and Flukes are great for catching the smaller fish when they are hitting topwater lures. Other great topwater lures are the Spook, Devil’s Horse, Pop-R and Chug Bug.
“In the evenings, the bass bite gets good back in the cover again,” Bowen said. “If I see fish hitting on top, I toss a topwater lure back into the trees. I find an opening in the weeds and work it in that opening. A topwater lure will catch a fish through an opening not much bigger than a washtub.”
Some days, Bowen never leaves the trees once he gets lost in them. If it’s hot, the shade helps keep it comfortable, and the bass seem to like the shade, too.
“I get back in the trees with my 19.5-foot Triton boat,” he said. “I can get around all right with a trolling motor, but sometimes I have to push off the trees with a paddle. But if you’re fishing from a 12- to 14-foot aluminum boat with a trolling motor and a paddle, you can get back even deeper and may be able to catch more bass. You can fish where the bigger bass boats can’t go.
“Saline is a very user-friendly lake. You can fish it with anything from a houseboat to a kayak. Once you get out of the channel, you can have some great fishing all to yourself.”
Besides largemouth bass, Saline Lake is full of panfish. When he’s not fishing a tournament or when he’s caught enough bass for the day, Bowen breaks out his ultralight spincast tackle. He has fond memories of catching crappie in his youth.
“I skipped school on what we called ‘senior skip day’ to run yo-yos for crappie at Saline Lake,” he said. “It got cold as heck, and then a freezing rain blew in. In spite of the cold, we still caught some fish.”
Summer fishing for crappie can also be excellent. Bowen now waits for the warmer weather to catch them.
“In June, you can catch some big black crappie,” he said. “They’re some really nice fish with dark speckles and make for some fine eating.
“I knock a hole in the water hyacinths and drop down with a blue/white, blue/silver or chartreuse tube jig. You can catch a bunch of crappie like that.”
The bream fishing is also hot in June. The banks hold lots of big bluegill and redear sunfish, and the best places to find them are on the sandy bottoms.
“The sandy banks near Allen Dam and at Cheechee Bay have some of those big ‘chest’ bream,” Bowen said. “They’re so big you can’t get your hand around them so you have to hold them against your chest to unhook them.
“I catch them with crickets and small crawfish I catch in the ditches before I go fishing. Crawfish an inch long or smaller work great for catching bream. Beetlespins work well, too. I like to use an ultralight spincast rig to cast a Beetlespin so I can reach back under the trees. But a Bream Buster pole works better for fishing the openings with live baits.”
