If you’re hungry for some fresh fish, now is a great time to fill a cooler with bream.
Bream, a collective term that encompasses a number of sunfish, generally refers to bluegill, redear (shellcrackers), longear (pumpkinseed) and green. They have narrow girths, with deep profiles.
Bluegills are widely distributed in Arkansas. They inhabit farm ponds, shallow lakes, river backwaters, sloughs, bayous and deep, clear reservoirs. They are distinguishable by the black tab on their gill plates. They run 4-12 inches long, but a good eating-size bluegill in Arkansas is 6-8 inches, big enough to cover the palm of an adult hand.
You can catch them with live crickets, live worms, small inline spinnerbaits and tiny soft plastic grubs on ultralight jigheads and horsehead spinners.
Redears are similar in shape to bluegills but are distinguishable by the red border on the gill flap tab. Their bodies are mottled with red, black and gold.
Their preferred natural food is snails and small mollusks. They bite the same natural baits as bluegills, but they are harder to catch with artificial lures.
Redears grow considerably larger than bluegills, reaching a maximum length of 17 inches.
The green sunfish is our most ubiquitous sunfish. It lives in all the places you’ll find redears and bluegills, but it also thrives in clear streams.
The greenie looks and acts more like a bass than the other two sunfishes. It will bite any soft plastic lure, spinnerbait or crankbait that invades its territory, regardless of its size. I know from experience that a green sunfish is more likely to impale you with your own treble hooks than any other fish.
In Arkansas, bream spawn from May through July. Spawning peaks on the full moon, which we have right now. That’s when you can catch them in shallow water against fallen logs, stumps, rocks and lily pads.
They need a sandy bottom to fan their nests, and they spawn communally. If you find one bream bed, you’ll find a bunch.
The most phenomenal bream nursery I ever saw was on Beaver Lake while fishing with Roger Harp in 2005. We were in Indian Creek, an extremely clear tributary near Beaver Dam. Bream beds were in such vast abundance that the entire lake bed looked like a moonscape.
In deep or stained water, you can find bream beds with sidescan sonar.
When they’ve finished spawning, bream move to deep water and scatter. Redears are especially hard to find in post-spawn because they tend to seek deep cover near creek and river channels.
There are many ways to catch bluegill, but it’s easiest during the spawn. With a trolling motor or sculling paddle, move slowly down a bank that has cover in the water. With a long pole and a fixed length of line, swing a live bait on a long-shank hook under a bobber as close to the cover as you can get. If you catch one bluegill, you’ll probably catch a mess.
I prefer fishing with ultralight spinning outfits. I keep one rigged for live bait, with a balsa pencil bobber under a bobber stop. In lieu of live bait, I often use 1/64-ounce white or yellow marabou jigs.
Another is rigged with a small spinner or a tiny crankbait, such as a Bomber Ultralight A or, my secret weapon, the Rebel Raider. It doesn’t look like much, but it catches anything and everything.
One of the most effective ways to catch bream is with live crickets on a drop shot rig, especially when bream have returned to deep water. A1/8-ounce Dipsey sinker with a short, 4-pound test monofilament dropper line takes a cricket to the bottom quickly, and the dropper suspends the cricket in the feeding zone.
A fast drop is important because small bream hover higher in the water column and eat any cricket they can catch. They won’t follow it very far down, though. The heavy sinker gets a cricket past them and takes it deep where the big bream are.
When I was a child, I used a small piece of bacon. When a fish strikes, it drives the bacon up the shank. One chunk lasts all day.
Eating is the best part. Bream fillets are light, mild and flaky, and they are delicious deep fried.
For frying, I recommend Riceland rice oil. It is light and produces a more even finish than traditional oils.