Getting there’s the trick

Rising river backwater produces biting bass


Tyrone Phillips caught a mess of bass like this Thursday in an Arkansas River backwater between Little Rock and Conway.
Tyrone Phillips caught a mess of bass like this Thursday in an Arkansas River backwater between Little Rock and Conway.

PALARM CREEK - If the boat didn’t sink, we stood a good chance of catching fish.

Minutes after launching, before he even started the outboard motor, Tyrone Phillips activated the bilge pump in the battered old Champion bass boat. Water shot from the bilge port on the stern. This was not an encouraging sign, but it wasn’t as unnerving as the rotten flooring. There really wasn’t any flooring, actually. Tattered gray marine carpet covered a spongy mess that used to be a floor. I discovered this by stepping into the void and plunging almost to the hull.

“Uh, I meant to warn you about that,” Phillips said meekly.

In fairness, Phillips is only borrowing the dilapidated Champion while repairs are completed on his distinctive purple Ranger. You use what you have, not what you wish you have.

“I won a tournament out of this boat,” Phillips said somewhat defensively as I struggled out of the hole and crawled to the safety of the passenger seat.

It wasn’t even noon, but crappie anglers were already trailering their boats and leaving Palarm Creek because the crappie weren’t biting. Phillips had another destination in mind, though, and we reached it after a short ride on the Arkansas River.

Getting in this particular backwater is tricky. Only two notches are big enough to allow passage for a bass boat at the mouth. Phillips knows one. Another angler in a different boat ran his aground. After that, you have to pass over another shallow spit of sand and gravel. There is no passage here. Either the water is deep enough, or it isn’t.

It wasn’t. The boat stuck fast, so Phillips stripped to his skivvies, hopped into the chilly water and pushed the boat across. On the other side, though, was some of the prettiest bass water in this part of the river. The banks are rocky, and they deepen to the northwest. On that end is a collection of stickups and laydowns, as well as a speckling of small sandbars that drop into deep water.

“What’s the biggest bass you ever caught?” Phillips asked.

“Eight [pounds] and change,” I replied.

“You’ve got a good chance of beating that in here,” he said. “I caught my biggest bass on the river right over there. It weighed 9-2, and they’re in here right now. They’re in prespawn, and they are eating!”

The water was low and very clear, and the air was calm. Those are not optimal conditions for prespawn fishing.

“It’s best when the water’s up,” Phillips said. “It fills up that pool on the other side of this dike, and it comes through the rocks. Not over the rocks, but through them. That’s when it’s really good.”

We started casting jerkbaits on the southeast corner and worked to the northwest.

Phillips prefers Luck-EStrike RC STX suspending jerkbaits. He used one that he customized with bright red gill stripes, by way of red fingernail polish. “I see all these pros painting their own lures, so I thought, ‘Hey, I can do that, too,’ ” said Phillips, who has enjoyed considerable success as a co-angler on the FLW Tour. “It works!”

It certainly did. The stripes were the only difference between Phillips’ lure and mine, but the fish ignored mine.

Ahead, a commotion broke out on the surface as a bass chased shad near the rocks. Phillips jerked his lure through the flurry. His line went taut as the first bass of the day struck. It was a fat male largemouth - about 2 pounds - colored bright olive with a well-defined lateral line. Phillips directed my attention farther along the dike, where rocks give way to a sand deposit.

“There’s always a big female on that spot where the rocks meet the sand,” he said. “There used to be a tree on the dike that marked the spot, but it’s gone now, and I don’t remember exactly where itis. Just cast in there and get ready.”

By that time I had abandoned the jerkbait in favor of a bubblegum-colored Sebile A.T. Worm with soft weights. It looked great in the water, but it produced no bites.

As we rounded the bend, Phillips caught two more bass. One was a 3-pound largemouth, and the other was a 2-pound spotted bass. He caught two more similar-size bass on the back side off a shallow flat.

We turned around and retraced our course. I hooked two big fish in the deep corner on a pumpkinseed/red flake Yamamoto Senko, but they got loose in the cover. Phillips broke off two big bass while setting the hook with a Senko.

I got out of the boat to look over the pool on the other side, and that’s when Phillips went on a rampage. He caught one largemouth that weighed more than 5 pounds, then another that weighed around 4 pounds, and yet another in the 2-pound range. Those fish all bit a small jig with a small, coffee-flavored crawfish-imitating trailer.

“I don’t care what people say, bass like that coffee flavor,” Phillips said.

He continued to catch themwhen I got back in the boat. He stayed with the jig, but quickly switched to the jerkbait whenever a prolonged gust of wind rippled the surface. He caught another nice largemouth with the jerkbait off one of the little sand islands in about 5 inches of water.

About 6 p.m., it was time to go. We reached the sand and gravel spit where we got stuck earlier.

“It looks like the water’s come up,” Phillips said. It was about 3 inches higher. We got stuck again, but we were able to push off to the other side with only the trolling motor and a sycamore stick that I picked up at the dike.

“That’s why you had that big flurry of bites,” I said. “They always bite on a rise, even a small one. Whatever happened created just a little bit of current that got them to going. That’s a primary pattern on places like the Verdigris River. Whenever a barge locks through, you’d better be ready because they’re going to bite like crazy for about 10 minutes.”

Phillips shared some of his own observations to support the theory. Whatever caused it contributed to the most productive six hours I’ve ever seen on the Arkansas River.

Sports, Pages 34 on 03/31/2013

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