Freshwater Fishing
Black Bayou Lake is pretty as a postcard
Black Bayou Lake, the centerpiece of the Black Bayou Lake National Wildlife Refuge, is pretty as a postcard. […]
Year: 2013
Freshwater Fishing
The bream of Louisiana
The word “bream” (pronounced “brim”) is a Southernism. Our northern friends call them by their proper species name, or they lump them all together as sunfish — which sounds altogether too sissy-like. In the South, we talk about bull bream.[…]
Freshwater Fishing
Tippets
Speckled trout action should be gangbusters this month after a colder than normal spring. There was plenty of clear water in April and that favors topwater action.[…]
Inshore Fishing
Reader offers advice
Dear Capt. Paul:
I recently wrote to you about the data card on my Garmin 182c not reading, and you posted the article in the April Louisiana Sportsman magazine. I am writing today to give you the results.[…]
Freshwater Fishing
Chinquapins/Lake Runners
This bream, officially known as the redear sunfish, is named for the red-margined flap extending rearward from its gill cover.[…]
Freshwater Fishing
Kincaid Lake
Kincaid Lake is about 10 miles west of Alexandria south of Highway 28 West. It lies partially within Kisatchie National Forest.[…]
Freshwater Fishing
Bream hybrids
Sunfish hybridize more than any other family of freshwater or saltwater fish. Often a successful day will yield 200 bream, and it’s a rare day when at least one hybrid between species isn’t in the bunch.[…]
Freshwater Fishing
Slick Perch/Slicks
This species, with the book name of “green sunfish,” is one of the most interesting of Louisiana’s bream species.[…]
Freshwater Fishing
Goggle-eyes
This large species of bream is properly called a “warmouth.” Its large mouth —larger than any other species of bream — and its more-elongated body shape have led some people (who should know better) to believe that they are hybrids between bluegills and bass.[…]
Freshwater Fishing
What a mouth!
The goggle-eye is, with the possible exception of a spawning bull bluegill, the prettiest of the bream clan. Males are especially beautiful, with a body mottled with bright orange and olive and a bright red spot behind each gill cover and at the rear base of the dorsal fin.[…]
Freshwater Fishing
Sunperch
Fishermen call two species of bream “sunperch:” the longear sunfish and the dollar sunfish. Both are brilliantly jewel-like in coloration, plastered in red-oranges and yellows and covered with turquoise reticulations.[…]
Freshwater Fishing
Stumpknockers
This pretty little fish, properly known as a spotted sunfish, is quite often caught by bluegill fishermen who are fishing in sluggish streams, swamps and lowland lakes.[…]
Freshwater Fishing
Groving deep-hooked fish
Any slack in the line will allow fish to swallow the hook pretty deep. And the small mouths of bream can make it difficult to remove them.[…]
Freshwater Fishing
Looking for Toledo Bend bream in all the right places
Toledo Bend is vast, so there are myriad areas in which to look for bream beds.[…]
Freshwater Fishing
Never cut an anchor loose again
Bream will stack up where tangles of cover is scattered along the lake bottom, and that means anchoring often results in anchor hang-ups.
[…]
Freshwater Fishing
Bluegills
This feisty species is definitely the backbone of the bream fishery. It gets big — for a bream —at 10 inches, and during its summer-long spawning season forms dense beds of nests.[…]