TICHNOR - I’ve seen some grand sunrises, but none as fine as the one that greeted Tim Griffis and me last Sunday at Post Lake.
It more than made up for a frustrating morning of unfulfilled bass fishing opportunities.
Griffis and his son Carson had been catching some pretty nice largemouths in Post Lake, an Arkansas River backwater near Arkansas Post. With cooler weather on the way, we figured the fishing could be very good. Of course, that is always a risky assumption. A hot streak is bound to go cold at some point, and it often happens when a certain writer for a certain newspaper arrives.
Griffis made a note of this, but the old saying is as true as ever. You fish when you can, not when you want.
Peckerwood Lodge is Griffis’ home away from home. It’s an old trailer about five minutes or less from Merrisach Lake Park. If this trailer could talk, it could tell many stories about many tons of catfish Griffis and others have caught on the lower Arkansas River below Wilbur D. Mills Dam and on the Mississippi River. In fact, one of the first features I wrote for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette was about one of these catfish forays, called “Here, kitty kitty!” Catfish fatigue is the reason Griffis has turned his attention to bass.
“I’m just burnt out on it,” Griffis said. “I’ve been doing it for so long, and it’s such a hassle. You can’t fish for catfish on the river by yourself. It’s a two-man job. The tackle is heavy, and fighting that river in the broiling sun just wears you out. I started out bass fishing when I was a kid, and I’ve rediscovered how much fun it is.”
I arrived at Peckerwood Lodge on Saturday afternoon, and Griffis and I launched his aluminum War Eagle boat minutes later. From the mouth of Merrisach Lake we entered the Arkansas Post canal and went upstream to the mouth of Post Lake. We cut through a narrow, shallow notch into an expansive backwater covered with invasive water hyacinth.
“Usually this time of year, you can hardly get in here for all the lily pads,” Griffis said. “This hyacinth moved in, and I guess it shaded out the lily pads.”
There were a few pads on the edges of the hyacinth, which otherwise formed impenetrable mats. Hyacinth doesn’t have roots. It just floats and drifts in the wind and current. It severely limits the amount of water you can fish, but it offers shade and escape cover for fish. It also harbors a rich diversity of aquatic life that provides food.
“Last time we were here, Carson picked up a clump,” Griffis said. “It was just full of bugs and stuff, and these brown earthworms were in it. He started throwing brown plastic worms, and the bass wouldn’t leave it alone. I had been catching them pretty good on Flukes, but that brown worm has been the bomb. Carson figured that out on his own.”
Griffis likes a plastic Fluke because of its tendency to fall at a backward angle. That allows it to get in front of bass hiding under lily pads. They often won’t move to hit a worm or a jig sinking vertically, but they can’t resist a Fluke.
“Not when it darts down there and hits them on the nose,” Griffis said. “They just want to kill it.”
Griffis caught a 2-pound largemouth with a brown worm under a lily pad, and another smaller bass the same way. About an hour before sunset, bass started feeding. We heard and saw giant boils and splashes, but we could not get those fish to bite. We finally gave up around dark and looked forward to better fishing in the morning.
We launched the boat at sunrise and entered the canal. The temperature was about 58 degrees, and thick fog hung over the warm water. We motored carefully into Post Lake and fished the edge of the hyacinth against the channel. Behind us was a stunning sight. A blazing yellow sun was just beginning to rise above the trees, and it lit the fog in the canal like fire. It made me think of Deep Purple’s Smoke on the Water. I snapped a few photos that were every bit as beautiful as the real thing. I’m glad I did because it didn’t last long.
Turning our attention back to fishing, we got scattered bites under lily pads, but they were the right kind of bites. Griffis stuck one fish that bowed his rod and stripped line, but it wrapped around a lily pad stem and pulled free. I failed to drive the hook home on a couple of good bites of my own.
Just a few feet away, in a small gap between hyacinth clumps, a monster largemouth jumped out of the water and pounced on something on the surface.
“Whatever that fish ate was pretty big,” Griffis said. “I bet it won’t eat again for the rest of the day.”
Griffis recalled an incident during the Arkansas Big Bass Bonanza several years ago. A monster bass chased a bream that sought refuge on top of a lily pad.
“It was a big bluegill, a keeper-size bluegill,” Griffis said. “It jumped on top of that pad and stayed there until it died.”
That’s the kind of bass that inhabits this part of the Arkansas, the kind that produces a five-fish limit weighing 35 pounds in a recent tournament.
Unfortunately, they didn’t want to play with us that day, but we’ll try them again soon.
Sports, Pages 37 on 09/22/2013