There’s no shortage of new areas to learn on this incredibly productive fishery.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the 10th installment of a 12-part series exploring the best bass-fishing areas in the Bayou State.
I love the Red River. I’ve tried to impartially write about each of the Louisiana waterways I’ve covered so far this year, but I can’t recuse myself from this one. I’m biased toward the Red River, and I can’t withdraw my emotions. The Red River has put down deep roots in my life because I’ve had some of my best bass-fishing moments there. Back when I had delusions of grandeur that I was a professional bass angler, it was the Red River that produced my first, and only, professional bass fishing tournament check. BASS was paying 53 places that tournament, and I finished 53rd.
They took it back at the next tournament in Missouri, and I spent the rest of that 2000-01 season donating gobs of money to anglers that I had no business fishing against.
That wasn’t the only root that the Red River put down in me. I had a second-place Louisiana Bass Federation finish in Alexandria by 0.03 of an ounce, and my tournament partner and I had a 5th place finish there at an Anglers Choice regional event.
This story isn’t about me, though. It’s about the Red River, and about how you can learn to love it just as much as I do. Once the Red River gets in your blood, you just can’t get it out.
Aging Well
The Red River has gone through what most fisheries go through since the lock-and-dam project was completed. Bass were pretty ignorant the first couple of years, and bit anything thrown at them. Then they wised up to fake food and the whirr of trolling motors.
Now the river has settled into a mature fishery that produces a good mix of numbers and big bass.
“I called the Red River a ‘catchery’ rather than a fishery the first two or three years,” said guide Russ McVey, who recently set the river record with a 13-pound giant. “That’s how good they bit back then. You could throw a variety of baits and catch them. It was tough fishing because of all the flooded timber, but the bite couldn’t have been better.”
The bass soon became acclimated to the new environment, and they learned to discern a real shad from a fake one. They also got more in tune with the boats that were running around, and the Red River suddenly became a fishery rather than a “catchery.” The fish were still there; it just took a little more work to get them to bite.
Now, the river has lost most of its standing timber.
“We’ve gone from worrying about yellowjackets and poison ivy from fishing live cottonwoods and bushes to fishing more structure-oriented contour changes,” McVey said.
There is a lot of hydrilla spreading throughout the backwaters, though, and that, along with the stocking of some Florida bass, has McVey excited about the future.
“There hasn’t been a major influx of Floridas, but there has been an effort to put some out there,” he said. “Couple that with the thick hydrilla, and I think the big bass potential will increase dramatically in the next five to eight years.”
Constant Change
Although the Red River has gone through changes typical of most any body of water in Louisiana, the fact that it is a river accelerates the changes in such a way that it could look a lot different this year than it did last year. The quick changes also make running the river and backwaters a little challenging.
“Take the White House area for instance,” said Minden pro and Red River guide Homer Humphreys. “That area has changed dramatically. The area in front of Kudzu Island is basically down to nothing but a ditch.
“The mild winters we’ve been having aren’t killing the vegetation back, and it’s taking over a lot of places. I’d estimate we’ve lost over 60 percent of the fishable water in White House and back in there by Blackie’s Place.”
However, while some areas are getting choked with grass, others are opening up. Areas that used to be full of standing timber are now nothing but stump fields that sit next to troughs and depressions. Smart anglers have realized that burning baits in these newly opened areas produces some of the largest stringers of bass to come from the river nowadays.
“You’ve also got to take into consideration the silting in of some areas,” Humphreys said. “That stuff changes every four months or so. You lose something, but you gain something at the same time. I don’t pay too much attention to it so long as there’s at least 2 foot over it, but anglers who haven’t fished the river in a while might find themselves sitting on a mud flat if they aren’t careful.”
Humphreys believes there’s an opportunity for the Red River to be worked much like the Arkansas River. There, the silt is pumped onto a barge and immediately sold to contractors. As of now on the Red, the silt is simply pumped from one place to another.
“They’re double working themselves,” Humphreys said. “They’re sucking it off the edge of the channel and moving it to the other side. All it’s going to do is shift back, and they’re going to have start the process all over again.”
Seasonal Patterns
• Spring — Humphreys’ two favorite spring areas are Cooley’s and Caspiana.
“Those big-headed suckers get back in there every spring,” he said. “I’m talking about 5- and 6-pounders. This is when it takes 22 to 28 pounds to win a tournament … you just as well get ready for it.”
Humphreys said the newly opened gullies are the places where big spring bass hang out. He likes to fish the deep stumps with a Bass Getter jig or bang them with a chartreuse/red Divin’ Ace crankbait on 20-pound line.
“You can crank that thing slowly through the stumps, and you better hold on, buddy,” Humphreys said. “That kicks off about February, depending on the weather and water conditions. A lot of grass will be dead from the winter cold, and the fish get a little vulnerable to stuff coming through those areas.”
Humphreys said bass location around the troughs in the spring could vary day to day. Some days they’ll be on the nearby 5-foot flats, where they are suckers for slow-rolled spinnerbaits and green pumpkin red plastics with 5/16-ounce weights. The next day they may back off to 7 or 8 feet, where they’ll eat the jig, crankbait and Rayburn Red Rat-L-Traps.
McVey bases his spring patterns on the water temperature. If it’s below 60 degrees, he sticks with black/blue and black/red Wave Worm tubes or a similar-colored Southpaw Custom Jig.
“I fish both around timber and laydowns on the ridges during the early spring,” McVey said. “And I’ll move to the backs of the oxbows once they get closer to spawning. That’s when you can go through there fishing something like a chartreuse/white spinnerbait with silver or copper blades.”
One of McVey’s most productive patterns this spring was fishing a weightless Tiki Stick around the remnants of old grass beds and the cottonwood stumps. Since the timber has mostly died out, McVey said a Rattlin’ Rogue has become a popular bait in the more open areas.
• Summer — McVey believes summer is one of the best seasons to fish the Red even though the size of fish diminishes somewhat. Smaller fish are the norm, but there are more than enough of them to make up for their lack of size.
“One- to 3-pounders are more common in summer,” McVey said. “This past summer, I had a lot of success fishing soft jerkbaits like the Shadicks and Shadee Shads. The key was to cast it to the edge of the grass and just let it sit there.”
As the summer moves on into July and August, McVey turns more to Texas-rigged worms and creature baits. McVey has also started to rely heavily on one of the hottest techniques to hit the bass fishing scene in recent years — the shaky head.
“You can take a small worm like a watermelon Stick-O and put it on a Tru-Tungsten Ikey Head, and catch all the fish you want around those rocks,” said McVey. “Finesse worms also work well. Just throw it around the rocks and bounce it off the bottom. Of course, you can always crank the rocks during the summer.”
Humphreys’ favorite way to fish during the summer is to get over the ledges, where the fish stack up in a hole no bigger than your front door. He’s found 30 to 40 such holes over the years, and he makes a milk run around the holes until he finds a few that are productive.
“If I never find a hot hole, I just keep moving between all of these spots catching one here and two there,” he said. “Before you know it, you’ve caught 30 fish on a bad day. These fish vary from 1 to 6 pounds, and they all come on a Carolina rig.”
Humphreys sticks with watermelon centipedes and lizards on his Carolina rig, and he uses his power of observation to determine whether to dye his plastics or not.
“Big bream have a lot of chartreuse on them,” Humphreys said. “Smaller bream have a lot less. That’s how I decide how much dye to use. If I see a bunch of small bream, I just barely dye the tip of the bait. It kills me to do it, but I’ve found that they’ll eat it best without dye if there is a lot of pressure on the river.”
Humphreys also likes fishing the rocks in the river with a mojo-rig using a Homer Weight available at Bass Pro Shops. He uses the same plastics as in the backwaters. A Sputter Ace fished with violent jerks also produces over the broken rocks during the first hour and a half of the morning.
• Fall — The Red River has always been a great place to fish crankbaits, but McVey said the river has become an awesome crankbait fishery the last couple years, and the cranks are at their best during the fall.
“Like a lot of other people, I reach for a 200-series Bandit,” McVey said. “I had a trip last year where we boated over 30 bass between 2 and 4 pounds all on the Bandit. They’ll eat a lot of crankbaits out here, but they’ll eat that Bandit when they won’t eat anything else.”
McVey throws the crankbaits on the rocks and in the timber. He uses the 200, 300 and 400 series baits depending on how deep he’s fishing. Firetiger, shad patterns and blue/chartreuse work more often than not.
“If I’m on the rocks, I like the Wing Dams that run from the bank out to the channel,” he added. “And I get in the middle of the troughs and knock them around the deeper stumps if I’m in the timber. That’s a great way to get a big bite.”
McVey also relies heavily on 3/8- and 1/2-ounce tandem willow Bass Pro Lazer Eye spinnerbaits in the shallower water around the troughs during lowlight conditions when fish move up to feed. Junebug and watermelon Tiki Sticks also produce well around the grass during the fall.
Humphreys likes to hit the lily pads in Port Lake during the fall. He targets bass moving up the drains with an Angel Hair Homer’s Clown spinnerbait with nickel willow blades. He also does a lot of flipping with 1/2-, 3/4- and 1-ounce weights where he finds clumps of water hyacinths with a sharp drop-off under the mat.
• Winter — Humphreys loves fishing the winter now more so than he used to. He guided straight through the winter last year, and he found it to his liking because there wasn’t anybody on the water.
“I figured out that my summer holes are almost as productive during the winter,” he said. “You can sit out there on them as long as the water doesn’t get high and dirty, and catch 15 to 20 on a DD14 crankbait or Carolina rigging. I learned you can also get out on the rocks as long as the river isn’t up, and catch a bunch on a drop shot.”
McVey agreed with Humphreys’ premise that Louisiana doesn’t have much of a winter anymore.
“It’s more like we go from fall to pre-spring,” he said. “I like to get out there and slow roll a spinnerbait or flip a crawfish-colored soft plastic in the timber between the rocks and the oxbows. Vertical presentations work best for me this time of year. I concentrate on 8 to 12 feet of water in places like Caspiana and Ninock.”
Finding Sweet Spots
Since a lot of the best spots in the Red River require a little inside knowledge, McVey offered a suggestion on how anglers can find their own honey holes.
“If you go out there and don’t know how to figure it out, a quick way to find the troughs and deeper water is to read the timber,” McVey said. “Look at the stumps. The bigger diameter stumps are the cottonwood stumps that were out of the water before it was flooded. They show you where the shallower areas are.
“When you see the little black stump, you’re looking at willow stumps. Everybody knows that willows grow on the edges of creeks or troughs. Those stumps show where the drop-off is. So if you see big cottonwood stumps with willow stumps next to them, the drop-off is right off the edge of those willows.”
