When the Atchafalaya River recedes, the bream go bonkers in the area’s backwaters. Here’s how to load the boat.
Gabby was never much of a fisherman. Oh, sure, she’d go out with the family when we would fish, but just so she could feel the wind in her hair as we ran the boat from one spot to another. “Go faster, Daddy,” the 9-year-old would call over her shoulder, her bright-red hair flowing over the console and tickling my nose.
Bugs could be stuck to her teeth, but she’d just keep grinning as long as the boat was moving.
So I didn’t have to argue with her too much that April morning to get her to hop in the truck for a bream-fishing trip. It also helped that another girl, Taylor Masson, would be along for the ride.
But Gabby really wasn’t all that interested in fishing — no matter how much I talked it up. All she knew about bream fishing was from watching her mother soak a cricket and stare at a cork.
But this was different, I told her. You see, I was on guaranteed catches, and we weren’t using crickets or a cork.
Nope, we were using Beetle Spins.
And she didn’t have to mess with little pumpkinseed bream, either. These were man-sized fish, many of them being fat bullheads, swelling from the tiny mouths so that it was difficult for a grown man to get his hand around the fish.
So here we were, the boat settling off plane, and Gabby still wasn’t all that interested in putting a rod in her hand.
I persisted, encouraging her to give it a shot before giving up.
She climbed up on the deck, and took the lightweight spincasting rig, trying to hide her decided lack of interest.
It would be the first time she had actually cast a lure, so I coached her through it.
The little bait sailed out smoothly, plopping into the water.
Gabby reeled in and repeated the action, quickly settling into the technique.
It didn’t take too many casts, however, before she squealed and clutched at the rod.
A bream had charged out of the submerged grass, sucked in the little Beetle Spin and didn’t like the feel of the hook.
Her line danced around as the fish tried desperately to rip the rod out of my daughter’s hands, the knuckles of which had suddenly gone white.
Gabby strained, giggled and worked the reel wildly while I tried to calm her down.
It was no use: She was lost in the thrill of the fight, and wasn’t hearing a thing I said.
I feared the 4-pound test would give, and the bream would be lost.
Finally, however, the fish was netted and pulled into the boat.
Gabby grabbed the bream by its lower lip (her small thumb just fit inside the round mouth) as soon as the hook was removed, and admired the bronze beauty.
Taylor, already an accomplished angler at the tender age of 12, picked up her pace. Her father, Todd, also got into the act.
Soon Taylor and Todd, too, were wrestling Atchafalaya Basin bream to the boat.
We were in a small, dead-end canal near Grand Lake. The conditions were perfect after the spring flood had thoroughly flushed out the swamps.
The water level was 11 feet at Butte La Rose, and the banks were only about 2 feet above the water. Water moved through several runouts.
The water bottom was thickly draped with vegetation, but there was about a 12- to 18-inch gap between the top of the grass and the surface.
And the water was crystal clear.
We could clearly see our little spinners all the way to the boat, and when a hungry bream came out of the water, the entire show could be watched.
Sometimes a fish would just come out of the grass and follow the lure, staying a fraction of an inch behind it.
The instinct was always to stop the retrieve and let the bream catch up, but that would result in the fish losing interest. No, the only hope was to keep going.
Sometimes speeding up the retrieve would be too much temptation. Other times, the bream would simply swim along behind the Beetle Spin like a dog on a leash, only to streak away when it saw the boat.
More often than not, however, the fish would hit the bait with the fury of a wild cat.
But it didn’t matter what the fish did — we were watching everything through polarized glasses, and that gave all of us (men and young girls, alike) enough action to keep us casting and laughing.
The trick was to cast all the way into the shallows and retrieve the lure as slowly as possible, working around any wood in the water while keeping the bait out of the grass.
A stump was almost guaranteed to produce a couple of fish, but logs and laydowns also could be productive.
We were using 1/16-ounce spinners, which were small enough for the fish to gobble up, but heavy enough to keep the lure in the water.
Attempts to use smaller lures proved fruitless — the speed needed to keep clear of the vegetation resulted in the featherweight baits popping out of the water.
We fished until 1 p.m., and had 60 absolute slabs cooling in the chest. We hadn’t kept anything that wasn’t at least hand-sized.
Most of the bream were massive, worthy of a fillet knife.
Added to the mass of bream flesh laying on ice were a few chunky goggle-eye and a couple of chinqapins.
I made several trips to those canals during a roughly four-week period so my son, daughter, parents and select friends could catch their fill.
During that time, there were some off trips. The key was that the water had to be no higher than 11 feet. Any higher, and the water pushed over the top of the banks, and the fish scattered. Any lower, and the grass would prevent effective use of the lures.
But when the water was the correct level, the fish were waiting.
Finally, however, the grass caught up with the water levels and matted the surface.
Grudgingly, I had to leave the canals and the fish I knew were still there — it was simply impossible to effectively fish the carpets of vegetation.
At this writing, the Atchafalaya River measured 14.1 feet at Butte La Rose, and was holding steady.
But when it begins falling, I’ll be heading back to those canals.
Is there anything special about these two canals? I don’t think so: They were chosen at random, and I’m certain there are many others that would be equally as productive.
But it’s hard to pass up a known hotspot, so I kept going back to them.
When those canals become too thick with grass, flooded cypress trees and their associated knees in less-congested waters become prime targets — just work Beetle Spins through the tangle of wood, until you find a bed.
That’s when you can mop up without ever moving the boat.
However, the little spinners aren’t the only way to catch the succulent panfish.
Prairieville’s Will Courtney uses standard sac-a-lait equipment to put fish in the boat in the southern end of the Basin.
“You can’t beat a white grub under a cork,” Courtney said. “They’ll eat it up.”
Six Mile Lake and the Shell Cuts just off of the Intracoastal Waterway and Big Fork Bayou are two of his favorite starting points.
Courtney said he simply tosses the grub, rigged on a standard crappie jig, around flooded trees and waits for the cork to plunge.
“I usually fish 16 to 18 inches deep, but you just play with it until you find where they are,” he explained.
Courtney prefers using a fly rod to toss his jig, but he admitted that a slip cork on a spinning rod works wonders, as well.
Courtney said he sticks with his white grub for only a few weeks.
“It works until the water gets hot or the water gets too low and the grass gets too bad,” he said.
To keep up with the fish, he simply switches tactics.
“I get out in Little Bayou Sorrel and use a chartreuse Bream Killer and a popper around the cypress trees,” Courtney said.
The popper draws some fish to the surface, but the Bream Killer is the real deal.
“You’ll see those little green worms start falling off the trees,” Courtney said. “That Bream Killer looks just like them.”
But his wife, Carolyn, sticks with the white grub and targets bigger fare.
“She uses that white jig under a cork in the cypress knees, and catches chinquapin,” Courtney chuckled.
Stephensville angler David Loupe doesn’t make any changes throughout the bream season: Whether it’s spring or summer, he’ll be found fishing hair jigs or solid tubes under a cork around the Flat Lake area.
“I like black/chartreuse and blue/white,” Loupe said.
He concentrates on three basic patterns: runouts, flooded cypress trees and grass patches.
“In Bear Bayou and (Little) Bayou Sorrel, you have those runouts from all those old logging canals,” he said. “Those fish will stage right in those things.”
Such runouts are especially effective when the water is falling out of the Basin.
“That black water will be pulling out of the swamps and mixing with the water in the main bayou,” he said. “It kind of eddies right there where the water meets, and I find they’ll be bunched up right there.”
Loupe recommended tossing a lure into the clear water and allowing the current to pull the bait to the fish.
Between the runouts, Loupe concentrates his efforts on the outside cypress trees.
That’s where he can mop up quickly.
“I just go along until I find a bed of them,” he explained.
But he doesn’t look in the shallower water behind the trees.
“I normally fish about 2 feet deep,” Loupe said. “You can catch them in that shallower water, but I just stay in the deeper water on the outside of the trees.”
Loupe said that those not wanting to cast a jig or tube can fall back to more traditional fare.
“With crickets, I’m sure you can catch a whole lot more,” he chuckled.
Productive trees also can be found in the Shell Oilfield just to the north of Little Bayou Sorrel.
Of course, staying above the grass still will be the key to success in all of these bayous and canals. Accomplishing this task becomes harder as the season ages and the vegetation reaches the surface and begins to mat.
That’s when Loupe simply moves out of the bayous and into Flat and Duck lakes.
But, unlike Courtney, Loupe doesn’t mess with the flooded cypress trees.
“Most of the time, I just fish in the grass patches, especially in Duck Lake,” he explained.
Loupe said he continues to look for the proper water clarity — he prefers a bit of stain instead of the clear, black water many associate with panfish — and plops his jig next to mats of vegetation.
“Last year, those chinquapin and goggle-eye got around those patches,” he said. “That was some fun.”
But he pays close attention to the grass patches he fishes.
“Some of them will be thick mats, some will be scattered patches and some will be just strings of grass,” Loupe said.
Once he catches a few fish around a certain type of vegetation patch, Loupe simply looks around for other similar clumps of grass, and skips everything else.
“Once you find them, usually they hang around the same stuff,” he said.
In other words, he patterns the bream, much as a bass angler patterns his prey.
Regardless of what technique is used, bream fishing offers a lot of action and great eating.
And one little girl can’t wait to get back in the boat.