" Old Black Water, Keep on Rollin' "
The Doobie Brothers
As a teenager growing up fishing around North Georgia , I thought I knew quite a bit about catching bass. Not until 1995 did I realize that I didn't know "SQUAT". I had just moved to Arkansas via Hawaii when my education began. Now I'll admit at first the sight of those old cypress filled, duckweed having, backwater sloughs didn't attract me too much. Man, was I ever wrong! After a few twist and turns, and a couple of location changes (south to north and back south) I settled down in a little town named Crossett. Now y'all probably have never heard of this tucked away little bass haven, but let me tell you, it was the birth place of an Awakening. In this small little town of roughly 6000 people I was fortunate enough to find a group of life long brothers waiting to teach me.
As I would find out, there was a migration that occurred almost every year, that any living soul who loves to feel that powerful BUZZ that vibrates through your stick when a TOAD rips through the water, needed to be apart of. My house was about three miles from this location.
In this sleepy little paper mill town, Two rivers converged (the Ouachita and the Saline) to make up the old black waters of Jack Lee reservoir. Now Jack Lee is a fine fishery year round, but in early spring it becomes phenomenal. Being so close to the Mississippi river flyway about October the DNR would start holding water so they could flood the surrounding river bottoms. Duck hunting is king in southeast Arkansas , and they made sure there was plenty of habitat for those ducks. What they also accomplished by doing this was to open up thousands of acres of new ground for those big sow bass to migrate to as the water warmed in the spring.
Now to these buddy's of mine I was an outsider, not saying they didn't trust me , just saying that some things are passed down from Grandfather, to Father, to Son. These little backwater sloughs , and bottle necks where the bass would migrate to as the water crept further out of the rivers banks were special, and were to remain special. If you didn't want 75 knuckleheads stacked up in your honey hole, you kept your mouth shut! After a few years of hunting and fishing with these guys thing began to change, and they realized this Ol' boy from Cartersville, Georgia just might be O.K.
As the seasons passed , deer in the fall, ducks in the winter, turkeys and bass in the spring, and last but not least hogs and frogs in the summer, I began to get invited on more and more trips, It got to the point that the six of us were nearly inseparable. Most of our time was spent in the pursuit of some type of game.
Duck season was drawing to an end and every morning waking up at 3 a.m. had began to take its toll. My buddy and I had over slept and the rest of the boys had left us. When we finally rolled out of the sack, we decided to put on our waders and try to walk in to our duck hole. The sun was already up as we walked along an old tram levee that had been long since rendered inoperable. About half way in we came upon a deep cut in the levee, at one time there had been a trestle here, but had been burnt out years before. As we scampered down to the bottom I noticed that the right side of the old levee had a few inches of standing water. The gap in the levee was only 20 or 30 yards wide, just enough to let the spring floods pass through and continue to flood the river bottoms without hindering the tram. As we stopped at the bottom to take a look and listen to gun shots, my buddy began to tell me of all the big bass he had caught while standing in this gap. He had told me when the river gauge hit 73 feet and was rising that the water would begin to push through the gap and the bass would follow. I filed the info away, and we continued on to meet up with the rest of our buddies. Duck season finally drew to and end and the thoughts of turkeys and bass was all I could think about.
This was the first year that I had ever heard of a little thing called "El Nino". It had been unusually wet in our area so the water had been held a little longer than normal to keep from flooding Louisiana. This also meant that some of the places that I was accustomed to turkey hunting on were under water. I had to venture out and look for some new areas. My search for the wily gobbler eventually carried me back to old levee. We had a lot of rain for the past few weeks and I had been watching the river gauge and chasing gobblers. I knew the river was getting close to 73 foot when I headed out. I was easing down the old levee when I heard what I thought was a hen turkey up near the trestle. I eased on up to find an old man on the levee edge sitting on a bucket with a 10 foot jig pole lying next to him and a slate an striker in his hands. That old black water made about an 6 foot eddy on each side of the trestle and appeared to be about knee deep pouring through the cut. I began to talk to the old gentlemen and he explained to me that ever year when the water got right he would come to this spot and wait on the crappie to bunch up there. I sat with the old man and talked for quite some time and he caught a few . As we talked, I told him how much I loved to catch bass and he told me how much he loved to eat crappie. By the end of our time together he had told me to go on back home and get a good stout fishin pole and some good string and all the black and blue tube jigs I could round up and come on back in the morning . He told me that the fishing was on the verge of bustin loose.
With that being said I took off home to gather my gear. I didn't sleep a wink that night with the anticipation of something special. The alarm clock eventually granted me permission to get up and head out and I could not have been more excited. When I arrived he was already there with his jig pole in hand lifting a nice slab up. He told me to wade on out to the middle of the gap and face up current. There was a large opening on both sides of the levee with a giant cypress tree in the center of the upstream side. The cypress was border by two hedge rows of buck brush about 20 yards on each side of the tree. The current split around the big cypress flowing down the edge of the buck brush and created a nice eddy right behind the tree. It then passed through the gap that I was standing in spilled into the hardwood bottoms behind me. He told me to make one of three cast. One to the tree base, one to the right side row of buck brush and then one to the left. He told me to keep repeating that pattern that the bass were on the way. As I stood there with that old black water swirling around my legs I wondered if the old man was telling me the truth. I had been there for what seemed like eternity when I made a cast to the base of the cypress (for the 500th time). As the tube fell to the bottom I began to slowly take up the slack as it tumbled along back toward me. "Thump" There it was, my first bite of the day. I raked back on the tube and Whiff , nothing! He laughed a little and told me to keep on trying, he said if I whiffed enough that I would eventually figure out how to catch them.
This went on for some time until I guess he felt sorry for me and began to explain. He said the first Tap was the bass trying to kill the "DAD", crawdad is what he was referring to. He then explained that if I would just continue to mend the line and wait that she would eventually eat the tube and head back up behind the tree in the eddy and wait for another one. After this explanation the Awakening began. I flipped that tube back up to the base of that ol' cypress and began to let it tumble back, when the tube got about a third of the way back I felt the tap. I waited for what seemed to be forever and sure enough the big old flippin' stick began to load up. I heaved back and felt that "BUZZ" that I was talking about earlier. At this point, I would love to say that at the end of my line was a big ol sow bellied ten pounder, but it wasn't. It was just a run of the mill 3 pound chunk. I was thrilled to say the least! As the morning passed on along I landed bass after bass. I have know idea how many bass I caught that day but it was a bunch. I would have to wade up out of the cut ever so often to rest my back and put tape on my thumb to cover the ragged flesh that was ripped apart from landing so many fish.
The water stayed right for three days and I was there for every single minute of it. For as long as I live, I will never forget those three days. On the second day I had my best day for size. I caught several bass in the 7 to 8 pound range and an untold number of 4 to 6 pound fish. I returned to that spot for a number of years after that, but was never able to duplicate that first time. Yes, there were some really good days there, but nothing like the first days. On the third day, fatigue had really began to set in. Standing in that cut with the current racing past had got the best of me. The water had steadily risen each day and was getting close to my waist. As I fought the current my old friend never left my side, he had sat there with me for three days watching me wreck those fish. He told me he had never watched someone get so much joy from a fish, that he was going to put right back into that old black water.
Sadly he passed away a few short months later. As I sat at his funeral the memories of those days burned deep in my heart. I never got to tell him how thankful I was , but I think he knew.
Those days were the beginning, the awakening had occurred. Though I still pursue different game I always come back to the BASS. It is without a doubt a passion that burns deep in my soul.
Fish On !
Jason
