Bream fishing still hot in Basin

Slip corks, crickets are key to heavy stringers

Bream fishing continues to be hot inside the Atchafalaya Basin, with crickets producing heavy stringers of bull bream and massive goggle-eye.

That fact was driven home last weekend when Louisiana Sportsman’s Tony Taylor and I hit a hole that had already produced well for me during three previous trips.And by 9:30 a.m., we had an estimated 50 to 60 fish cooling in the ice chest. By 12:30 p.m., the count had grown to 107.

Taylor was astounded by the action.

“This is the best freshwater trip I’ve had in a long time,” he said.

There were a few keys to success: slip corks, crickets and shade.

See the video below to learn how to rig a slip cork and full details on the keys to our successful day on the water..

I’m a late-comer to the wonders of fishing slip corks, although I grew up fishing for bream. It wasn’t until last year, however, that my father Allen showed me how to rig a slip cork.

My fishing hasn’t been the same since. The rig, fished on light-action spinning gear, has produced hundreds of bream simply for the fact that pinpoint casts — without having to sit on top of an area as with a jigging pole — are possible.

Crickets dangling under the cork also were important: We watched a boat working the same stretch of bank as us with jigs tipped with crappie nibblets, and they caught very few fish.

Finally, the canal we were working ran north/south, and that meant the eastern shoreline would hold shade until late in the afternoon. The fish were ganged up on that side, while the sunny bank yielded far fewer bites.

Be sure to watch the attached video, and find more reports — and post your own — in the LouisianaSportsman.com fishing forum.

About Andy Crawford 863 Articles
Andy Crawford has spent nearly his entire career writing about and photographing Louisiana’s hunting and fishing community. While he has written for national publications, even spending four years as a senior writer for B.A.S.S., Crawford never strayed far from the pages of Louisiana Sportsman. Learn more about his work at www.AndyCrawford.Photography.