Whoever that was baking chocolate chip cookies near Two Rivers Park on Friday made it really hard to concentrate on bass fishing.
Cody Kelley of Mayflower and I braved cold drizzle to try our luck coaxing bass from the Arkansas River. We didn't take long to figure out that the bass were uncooperative, and then we rounded the bend into the Arkansas River upstream from its confluence with the Little Maumelle River. The aroma of fresh-baked cookies hung heavy in the air, and we struggled to fend off a Pavlovian flood.
"We might have to put this boat on the bank and go raid that kitchen," Kelley said.
We soldiered on, trying in vain to figure out why bass wouldn't bite on what appeared to be a perfect day. The water was about 84 degrees, and the air was in the 60s. The sky had a low overcast and a slight breeze. There was a little current in the river, but it was more pronounced in some places. When fish bit they were aggressive. It's just that bites were scarce, and the fish that bit were small.
Kelley, 24, is the latest in a long line of young Arkansans to excel as a co-angler on the FLW Tour. He qualified for the Forrest Wood Cup, which will be held Aug. 14-17 in Columbia, S.C., by finishing the season ranked 16th out of a field of 229 anglers. His crowning achievement was winning the $20,000 co-angler championship June 28 at the FLW Tour event at Kentucky Lake. He also competes as a boater on FLW's Rayovac Tour, which is a level below the main tour, and is ranked seventh out of 221 anglers.
That journey started at lakes Brewer and Conway, but he's worked hard at decoding a notoriously tough fishery on the Arkansas River. We're not talking Lake Dardanelle or the Dumas Pool, either. He routinely catches them in the Little Rock, Conway and Morrilton pools, fishing water that more experienced anglers overlook. One such spot is near the boat ramp at Two Rivers Park.
"I won a little tournament right here once," Kelley said. "I caught 18 pounds."
The water next Sullivan Island is very shallow, but there is a line of lily pads that often hold bass. There is also a line of brush piles along the Little Maumelle channel that many anglers don't know exists. He caught two small largemouths swimming a jig through the pads between 8-9 a.m., and I missed two bites on a big clattering buzzbait and a plastic frog.
The rock point upstream can be a good place to catch bass on a shaky head jig, and then there are the lily pads that line the inlet to the north. If the bass were home, they slept late because they wanted nothing to do with anything we threw.
We motored downriver toward the mooring quays near Murray Lock & Dam, turned into the channel and went back upriver to the edge of the big, shallow cove. In the summer, when the river is low, a big sandbar forms there where people often beach their boats to picnic and party. Kelley said it's also a good fishing spot.
"There's a shell bed at the edge here," Kelley said, showing me on his big Lowrance electronic graph. "It usually holds some pretty good fish, but it's easy to snap your line when a 5-pounder starts wallowing down there."
These high-tech graphs and the ability to use them properly has helped Kelley and his contemporaries find subtle fish-holding structure all over the Arkansas River that older anglers don't know exist.
"Everybody has this equipment now, but I think people my age have an advantage because we've grown up with all this technology and we know how to use it," Kelley said.
Big-screen, high-resolution screens side-scan sonar and intricately detailed topographic maps paint a stunning picture of a riverbed that holds many treasures for bass anglers. Rock jetties are key features.
"They're all over this river," Kelley said. "Everyone knows the big ones, but there are a lot of smaller ones and some that are submerged that people either don't know about or they ignore."
Kelley's graph showed the gap between one small jetty, along with another big shellbed.
"Some of them run perpendicular to the channel and some run horizontal," Kelley explained. "There's always a deep hole on the downstream side where the water plunges over and carves out the bottom."
The holes can be 30 feet deep or more. They provide thermal refuge for bass, as well as stations to ambush the baitfish that gather there. Working the jetties with a crankbait is a great way to catch big bass in the summer. Kelley tied on a black Bandit 200 series crankbait for that purpose.
"Black is a good color because the crawdads that bass spit up when you catch them are just jet black," Kelley said.
Small bass nipped at the crankbait, but none were keepers. However, Kelley caught a succession of big freshwater drum with it.
"Call me the Drum Master," said Kelley, who loves to catch them for fun but admitted that they are a nuisance when he's after largemouths exclusively.
We tried several more jetties and shellbeds, but it was the same story. We'd get some small bites, but nothing worth boating.
Kelley aimed the boat at a straight rocky bank that he ordinarily wouldn't give a second thought.
"The fish aren't where they're supposed to be, so we'll try a place where they're not supposed to be," he said. "Sometimes you'll find them in really stupid places like this."
Kelley caught a small bass on the first cast. A decent size fish bit my worm, but I couldn't set the hook. Kelley caught the biggest drum of the day there, then that place went cold.
We returned to Two Rivers Park and fished the same stuff we started with at Sullivan Island. I caught the biggest fish of the day on the frog. Like all the other fish that bit the frog, this one struck in open water as soon as the frog hit the water.
"See, they're aggressive when they do hit," Kelley said. "It's not like we've had to talk them into it."
Some days the fishing just isn't very good.
We resolved to try again on a better day, and we'll bring cookies.
Sports on 07/20/2014