There’s good reason to be excited about fishing for bass, crappie and bream in June at Toledo Bend. Our lake is starting to act — i.e., fish — like the good old days. That’s encouraging to know heading into summer. It’s a great opportunity to catch all three species following the frenzy of the spring spawn so many people get caught up in.
Bass, crappie and, even, bluegill generally have moved away from their spawning areas by now. As of the first week of May, bass were heading to deeper waters, crappie moving out to brush piles on the outside, with a few on inside structure, and many bream heading as deep as 18 to 24 feet.
Listen, crappie anglers, just because you don’t have brush piles planted in strategic locations around the lake doesn’t mean slabs can’t be caught off natural stuff, such as deadfalls, and there are plenty of those. As for key depths, I’d start looking from 17 feet out to 22 to 25 foot depths. However, I’ll still check 12-foot depths because normally they’re shallower the farther you go into creeks. Use your marine electronics and follow creek channels.
Forward facing sonar
After fishing most of my days and loving every minute of it, winning a Bassmaster Classic in 1975, I was open to new techniques and times but still pretty much set in my ways. It wasn’t that long ago that forward facing sonar hit the market and, yes, I hooked up with it. Before returning up here to resume my guiding career six years ago, I started learning it and finding fish in Henderson Lake and the Mermentau River.
It has been a game changer for what we do at Living the Dream Guide Service to put people on crappie. I run two forward facing units on my boat, one that I use as I’m pulling up to an area before turning it off and relying on the other one. I’m pretty dang proficient at it but by no means an expert. The technology does get the job done.
If you are tightlining to put crappie in the boat, remember this, the least amount of action you put into the hair jig, tube jig or soft plastic minnow lookalike the more it produces fish. While tightlining, I normally fish 1/32- or 1/16-ounce leadheads on 6-pound test line to put plenty of slabs in my 27 ½-foot long tritoon with a 250 hp outboard motor to push it.
Color selection hinges on water clarity. If it’s a little stained, brown/chartreuse and black/chartreuse often work the best, while in clear water it’s hard to beat blue-hue baits. Straight shad colors also trigger many bites.
My preference colorwise, I like blueback stuff and the minnow colors. Sometimes I’ll crimp a very small BB weight about 8 to 10 inches above the leadhead.
A winning pattern
While I’ve done a lot more crappie fishing than bass fishing these past half-dozen years, my favorite bass fishing pattern should still get bass to open their jaws this month. I probe the outside edges of grass beds with stick baits, mostly Zara Spooks. They will bite prop baits but I’m not a big prop bait fisherman. I enjoy walking-the-dog with Spooks.
Topwaters also prompt explosions from bass on the inside edges of hydrilla, particularly on the south end of the lake.
After the topwater bite, it’s time to go to plastic worms in plum, plum apple and tequila sunrise. Those 10- to 12-inch plastic worms can produce if you’re fishing deep water, but you’ve got to realize what’s down there. If you’re catching plenty of fish, increase the size of your bait.
I’ve been guiding on this lake the last five years with Living the Dream Guide Service. June should be a prime time to catch crappie. Give us a call at (936) 404-2688.
