No one to blame if you miss the bream bite

Five dozen — Bayou Black Marina — came the text on my cell phone a couple Saturdays ago.
It was from co-worker and good friend, Kenny Lodrigue, who knew full well I had a project going on that weekend. He knew darn well my favorite fish to catch is chinquapins, and I know deliberately he was rubbing his good fortune in.
After thinking about it for a while, I couldn’t be too thin skinned. After all, up until the plunge in the price of a barrel of oil, my pad-nah worked a lot of weekends, while I was setting the hook on a few bream.
“We definitely gotta get together,” my friend teased me. “You can take pictures of me
catching!”
“Yeah-yeah-yeahhhh,” I spoke while working my thumbs on the face of my phone texting, “Let’s do it.”
To which his text came back, “OK — get back with you.”
The bottom line is, by mid-April, chinquapins (redear sunfish) and blue gills are biting big time around these parts.
What’s more, with the days getting longer as summer approaches, in most cases, it’s only a short 5- to 10-minute boat ride out of any local landing to get in on the action before nightfall.
Some areas worth checking out are the north end of Duck Lake, Grassy Lake and the Cheramie off Grassy Lake.
At times, American Lake produces some catches.
The mouth of Bayou April and Bayou February, where it drops into Bayou Saul, is good early, but the catch drops off from fishing pressure after the first few weeks.
Some areas south of the Intracoastal Waterway around Bateman Island and behind the recycling plant can be good.
The spillway out of Adams Landing in the Shell Fields can be stellar when the water is falling. And Flat Lake and Bear Bayou also produce catches at times.
Be sure to fish edges of trees, lay downs and sprigs of grass whenever the opportunity presents itself.
Fish any small drains you come across and even the openings where crawfishermen have cut trails where they meet the main bayous, particularly where the water is flowing out and there is a drop off.
In short, never pass up deadfalls, stumps, brush piles and sloughs.
Always fish the backside of structure when the water is moving.
The bottom line about this time of year is, with warmer days, the water temperature reaches the prefect 68 to 75 degree mark chinquapins and bluegills like to spawn in. They are aggressive and normally where you catch one bull bream, you’ll catch several.
Look for clear to slightly stained water and start fishing at 1 to 1½ foot deep, working your way deeper if necessary.
Don’t be afraid to fish the bottom for chinquapins, either.
All too often the bigger bull bream will bite a bait slowly crawling along the bottom.
The best live bait for chinquapins and bluegills is red worms. Though crickets also catch, they tend to get one bite, and if you miss setting the
hook, you’ve lost your bait.
One of the best types and size hooks to use is a number 6 Aberdeen. It’s a great panfish size.
But if you find the fish you’re catching are swallowing your worm and hook, go slightly larger.
Lodrigue prefers using a blue and white or chartreuse and black plastic on a 1/16th-oz. jig hook tipped with a little piece of worm. A lot of anglers tip their hooks with a little something extra. A jig hook and plastic tipped with Berkley Nibbles can be a deadly combination when fishing bream.
Another good friend and Patterson resident, Gerald Foulcard, likes to use artificial baits when fishing bream and sac-alait.
Foulcard said, “I’ll use Becky’s hair jigs to coax fish into biting. I’ll slow roll a Johnson beetle spin deep or bounce the hair jig off of the bottom.
Generally, when I use either of these baits and tactic for bream, it’s ‘BAM,’ and it’s on.”
For colors when using artificials, Foulcard mentions he uses
black and chartreuse, blue and white, black and pink or red.
There are numerous cork and bobber combinations available today. All work well, and honestly, when the chinquapins are biting, it really doesn’t matter what you use for a float. It comes down to personal preference.
However, when using a float, make sure you match them to the hook and split-shot weight, where they set correctly on the water.
The bottom line is the bream bite is on right now. What’s more, there’s no need to be thinskinned about a braggadocios
text message. You only have yourself to blame if you don’t get in on some of the local action.
EDITOR’S NOTE: John K. Flores is The Daily Review’s outdoor writer. If you wish to make a comment or have an anecdote, recipe or story to share, you can contact John K. Flores at 985-395-5586, gowiththeflo@cox.net, or catch him on Facebook at Gowiththeflo Outdoors.