Six species give summer anglers all the action they can handle.
“We can call this the Toledo Bend Slam,” the voice on the other end of the phone said. “We should be able to catch black bass, white bass, stripers, bream, crappie…” That last one got my attention.
“Can we just slam the crappie?” I asked.
“If you want to,” the fellow answered. “But I’ve got all these fish cornered right now, and if we want to slam them we can’t spend too much time on the sac-a-lait.”
Toledo Bend is all things to all anglers. Looking for a largemouth bite? Toledo Bend has it. How about a crappie bite? Toledo Bend’s got that too. Catfish? Bream? Striper? White bass? No need to worry, Toledo Bend has you covered.
While any of these fish is fun and challenging in its own right, catching all of these species during the same day would have to be something special.
This phrase “Grand Slam” probably originated in the card game bridge. When a player captures all 13 tricks, he or she has achieved a “Grand Slam.” Today, the term is associated with the most you can do in any sport. For example, the most runs you can score at one time in baseball is four, thus a batter going yard with the bases loaded is a grand slam.
“Grand Slam” is also used in sports to indicate the capturing of all a sport’s major titles during one calendar year. In golf, it means a golfer has won The Masters, the U.S. Open, the British Open and the PGA Championship. In tennis, it’s the Australian, French and U.S. Opens along with Wimbledon.
“Grand Slam” is also used in the outdoor sports. Harvesting an Osceola, Eastern, Rio Grande and a Merriam’s turkey is considered a grand slam. Therefore, it would only stand to reason that the Toledo Bend Grand Slam would be catching all of the major game fish that call the 185,000-acre lake home.
The fellow on the other end of my phone promising the slam was John Erickson. His version of the “grand slam” was catching black bass, white bass, crappie, bream, catfish and striper all on the same trip.
I had to admit this sounded like a neat idea. However, the thing that worried me was that we would spend too much time riding around the lake looking for each of these, and that we wouldn’t catch some of our fish on the list because we were looking for the others.
My concerns were unwarranted, however. Just a short idle away from the boat launch at San Patricio, Big John was already tied up with some schooling bass that were trying to get an early breakfast. It wasn’t the large expanse of schooling bass that one typically pictures. It was just a small group of bass working on the roaming shad over their heads.
“You’ve got to get out here early this time of year to get this quick action,” Erickson said as he zigzagged his boat across the northern point of San Patricio. He kept slinging his Lucky Craft Sammy topwater walker as he talked.
“There’s a lot of feeding action at the mouths of each of these creeks first thing in the morning before the sun tops the trees,” he continued. “It’s all based on the shad. When their breakfast swims over the top of their heads, the bass can’t help but take advantage of it.”
Erickson hooked up with several chunky bass, but none made the full trip into his boat. The bass weren’t engulfing the bait, and they doggedly shook free before they succumbed to Erickson’s grasping hand.
“Looks like we’re going to miss the Grand Slam,” I quipped. “Those bass look like they want to keep their distance from the fish paparazzi. Oh well, I guess we can turn it into a white perch story … assuming we can get them in the boat.”
Undaunted, Erickson continued tossing his Sammy to the feeding bass. My anticipation ebbed as quickly as the bass quit feeding on the surface. Not one to admit defeat, Erickson kept fishing even after the fish disappeared. It wasn’t long before he had a fish attack his bait.
After a ferocious battle, Erickson swung the fish over the gunwale.
“Awesome!” I exclaimed. “Looks like we have our first fish … a white bass? Works for me. One down, five to go.”
Erickson decided to stay put even though the sun was quickly rising behind the trees. Our largemouth bite wasn’t going to last much longer, but the opportunity to stay in the area and catch a striper was too much for Erickson to ignore.
“We can go catch a bass later around the pads,” he said. “There’s probably a few stripers around here, and we might be able to go ahead and scratch it off our list. A striper will probably be our toughest fish to catch today, so if we can get it done early, so much the better.”
Apparently, the only thing left around our early morning hotspot was white bass as Erickson brought in fish after fish.
“We need to do something,” I suggested. “If we stay here much longer, we’re going to miss out on catching something else — namely the crappie.”
Erickson turned with a wry smile and informed me that I had nothing to worry about.
“I can guarantee you we aren’t going to miss out on catching crappie,” he retorted. “I’ve got them pegged on some brushpiles off these main-lake points in about 8 feet of water. Trust me, there’s plenty to go around. Now, why don’t we go try to catch that bass…”
Erickson’s words were interrupted by a grunt from the back of the boat. Erickson’s middle son was along for the ride, and he was busy trying to keep hold of his rod that was bowing under the pressure of a tugging fish. Was this the striper for which we had been searching?
The line started spinning around and around like the fish was trying to roll itself free. I had seen that plenty times in my grandfather’s catfish ponds as I was growing up. But the boy had been throwing a lipless crankbait, and I couldn’t see a catfish biting something like that.
Sure enough, a big blue head with whiskers emerged from the depths. It wasn’t exactly what we were looking for at the moment, but it sure eased some of the pressure of having to look for a whiskerfish later on. Two down, four more to go.
We pulled up the trolling motor, and headed toward a lily pad field that was near the boat launch. Erickson began buzzing a Stanley Ribbit topwater frog through the pads. He didn’t have a good feeling because he thought it might be too early for the bass to be positioned under the pads. A few bass spooked at the sound of the frog hitting the water.
“They’re here,” he said with growing hope in his voice. “They’re out in the lanes rather than under the pads. Hopefully, we’ll get one’s attention here in a minute or two.”
I made at least 200 casts around the pads in short order and spooked more bass than I could count. Erickson kept switching back and forth between the fake frog and a Senko. He soon got a fish to swirl on his frog, but the fish didn’t even touch it. Erickson hurriedly reeled in the frog and tossed out the Senko in the same spot — BAM! Three down, three to go.
As a self-diagnosed Ribbit freak, I didn’t really care if we finished the Grand Slam or not. I was perfectly content to stay right there and keep chunking that frog. I hadn’t had a bite yet, but I just new that a gorilla was going to blow up on it any second. I told Erickson to park it right here.
“We’ve got three more to go,” he said. “And I think that buzzing frog has hypnotized you. Have you forgot about all those slabs out there just waiting to be caught?”
I came to my senses and laid the frog down. It was a short run to the southern main-lake point of San Patricio. I commented about how we might be able to complete the slam without running much farther than one mile from the boat launch.
“That’s the beauty of fishing Toledo Bend during the summer,” Erickson said. “All these fish migrate out of the creeks and they set up on the first main-lake structure and cover they come to. They’ll eventually spread out and get in the main-lake grass and sloughs and stuff, but, until they do, you don’t have to go far to catch whatever kind of fish you want.”
We pulled up to a small stump that looked like the thousand stumps that surrounded it. It was a nondescript little piece of flooded wood, but under the surface it was more than that. Erickson had taken the time to sink some brush near its base, and he used his GPS to troll right up to it.
“The crappie, perhaps more so than any of the other fish, become easy targets in the summer because they gang up on the first brushpiles they come to as they move out of the creeks,” Erickson said. “If you set enough piles out in 8 to 15 feet of water, you’ll get more crappie than you can clean.”
The first slab fell on the first cast. Four down, two to go. Erickson was dunking a tiny pearl/chartreuse Stanley Wedge Tail Minnow. The second one came on his second cast.
I began working on them just as fast as Erickson’s son could put a shiner on my hook. The promise of an ice chest full of cleaned crappie fillets and the speed of the action convinced me to stay put on this honey hole a while.
We stayed on the first pile until the bite slowed to one fish ever four casts or so. That must have been a little too slow for Erickson because we pulled off the pile and idled over to another one with the same results.
After my hand tired from reeling in all those slabs, I mentioned that we might ought to go looking for some bream and stripers. Erickson concurred, and we idled over to some larger timber amidst all the smaller stumps.
“This is the edge of a slough,” Erickson said. “The bream have been bedding right on the lip of the drop. They may have tailed off a little, but there should still be enough around to add it to our list.”
I nestled a cricket right up beside one of the big trunks. The cork disappeared just as soon as the cricket reached its preset depth. I slung the bream over the side of the boat as Erickson was bringing in his own. Five down, one to go.
“Now what are we going to do?” I asked. “We need a striper, and I don’t really see that happening. Meat Loaf would be proud of you because five out of six ain’t bad.”
Erickson pulled out a long rod with a big Fat Free Shad crankbait hooked to the reel.
“Let’s go for a ride,” he said. “We’re going trolling.”
We arrived at a giant slough out in the middle of the lake, and Erickson made a long cast behind his boat. I made one out the other side with a Norman DD22. Erickson put the boat in gear and began idling down the edge of the deep slough.
We hauled water for the length of the slough. The tops of my knees were starting to turn red, so I suggested that we call it a day.
It definitely wasn’t a bad day. In fact, it was a great day of fishing on Toledo Bend. We probably could have caught a lot more of everything other than the crappie if we would have stayed on them as long as we did the sac-a-lait. All in all, I told him I considered the day a success.
“Let’s just try down the middle of the slough on the way back in,” Erickson said as he turned the boat 180 degrees. “I know there are some in here. Maybe they’re in the deeper water.”
We went about 20 yards, and Erickson’s rod top bounced down. He pulled the long rod as hard as he could and began reeling frantically.
“Could be a big largemouth,” he grunted. “It’s kind of fighting like one.”
The fish never jumped, and Erickson fought it up to the side of the boat. In one final hysterical moment, the striper came up by the side of the boat and earned its freedom. The crankbait flew over my head.
“Close enough,” I acknowledged. “Grand slam!”
