Here’s a trip report from Al Harper:
MDC maintains many lakes statewide stocked with various species of fish. One of them near my town is Port Hudson. It’s a 55-acre lake surrounded by a 225-acre conservation area that holds largemouth (black) bass, panfish, and channel cats. I, Al Harper, fish it at least yearly, usually with good results.
This is a great time to catch bass there on a fly rod using poppers. Bass hover or roam a little out from the shoreline and readily hit a popper worked aggressively in the still water. A stealthy approach, well placed casts, and a series of tight strips invokes strong surface strikes and some great action getting the strong bass to the boat.
The lake was opened for fishing in 1997 and was fished heavily for a few years. Bass over the legal size of 18” can be hard to catch, but I have found bass just under that size to be very plentiful and eager to bite when offered the right lure. This time of year a blunt nosed popper made of deer hair works well.
The lake is picturesque in appearance and holds a great amount of structure both above and below the surface with accessible deep areas where fish feel safe. With a fly rod, it is fairly technical fishing. There are many obstacles to hamper a backcast and casting accuracy is often required to hit patches of water surrounded by fallen logs and other structure. The bass seem to hug that cover where they can and are somewhat spooky. A quiet, inflatable drift boat with a shallow draft was more easily maneuvered in the flooded remnants of the forest that makes up the footprint of the lake.
The most productive casts usually needed to land a fly around 25 to 35 feet from the driftboat. Cicadas were visible in the lake from time to time making themselves very tempting sources of food. However, we did not notice bass striking them as they thrashed around on the surface flapping their delicate wings. It took the more aggressive and noisy movements of a popper to goad the fish into striking.
It was exciting when these beautiful bass, most of which were 14 to 16” in length, walloped top water flys. The main challenge to successfully landing them was keeping these fighters from wrapping your line around structure they would charge toward when hooked. I lost several that successfully reached cover. Another challenge was just being ready for the resounding surface strikes a good distance away and the necessity for line management and quick reaction needed to get a solid hookset. On that morning, I was successful with 26 nice bass and my fellow fishing friend added about ten, counting some panfish he caught on a smaller popper.
By a little after noon, the action had slowed. The bass seemed to be hunting less actively and had either moved to deeper holes or hunkered tightly into the grassy shoreline. My past trips to the lake had shown bass would return to the same areas late in the afternoon and, I suppose, would continue to feed nocturnally when, I’ve often suspected, they would be joined by the “keeper sized” fish that got to be that way by adapting more careful feeding patterns. The lake is open until 4 AM to 10 PM so fishing before or after dark might be a future effort that would prove worthwhile. Meanwhile, these spring largemouth bass are really fun to catch.
