Sometimes you’ve just got to go fishing. No stress, no worries and no requirements – just go catch what bites. Outdoor writer Kenny Keiser, guide/writer Brad Wiegmann and I did just that Thursday and Friday on Arkansas’ Beaver Lake, and three lures claimed the lion’s share of the fish. The XCalibur Xt3 Twitch Bait, the square-lipped Fat Free Shallow and the classic 3-inch Muy Grub were the key lures.
Beaver Lake is known for plenty of largemouth, smallmouth and spotted bass, and for crappie and big white bass, hybrids and stripers, as well as catfish. The three anglers enjoying the sun on Beaver Thursday and Friday wanted to simply catch fish, so selected lures that would appeal to the species most likely to bite – bass, white bass and crappie. For the largemouth and spotted bass, we also flipped and pitched YUM Wooly Bugs and Big Show Craws.
Beaver Lake features 28,370 acres of water and 487 miles of shoreline nestled high in the Ozark Mountains. Right now the redbuds and dogwoods are in bloom and those shorelines are beautiful. We fished the area where the White River and the War Eagle join in the upper portion of Beaver and the water was stained.
Wiegmann is the master when it comes to Beaver’s bass, white bass and stripers and often spoons for them, but the dingy water prevented that, so it was head to the backs of creek arms to locate the concentrations of shad, then casting lures to likely spots. In the shallowest water we threw the crankbait and Twitch Bait and had a ball with the white bass and largemouth that were stacked in feeding on the baitfish.
“The Foxy Momma is the go-to color pattern when it’s this sunny out,” Wiegmann said of the Xt3 Twitch Bait. “The chrome background on that lure really puts out the flash. Foxy Shad also is a great color pattern and I catch a lot of whites and bass on it.
“I think the cold front that came through has made the pause more
important. They want to know it’s something they can easily catch.”
The normal retrieve with a Twitch Bait can be slow or quick, but consists of a twitch-twitch-pause. On Friday Wiegmann found that a single twitch then a little longer pause was key to catching these bass and white bass.
“The important thing about the twitch is that you need to have a little slack in your line when you do it,” Wiegmann said. “That slack makes the Twitch Bait shoot to one side or the other rather than just forward.”
While Wiegmann and I were throwing the Twitch Bait, Kieser was pulling in bass after bass on the square-lipped Fat Free Shallow in Dance’s Threadfin Shad color pattern. That color also uses a chrome base, supporting the “bright day, bright lure” line of fishing thought.
“That square lip comes through cover really well, and a lot of what we’re fishing is over submerged brush,” Wiegmann said. “If you’re careful you can just worm that square-lipped bait right through the brush and the bass love it.”
The final lure, a Muy Grub or YUM Walleye Grub on a jighead is always a great back-up lure and often the one the white bass want more than any other. The best color pattern was Glimmer Blue Pepper, and was fished on several sizes of jighead depending on depth and wind. Kieser caught plenty of keeper-sized crappie by letting the bait drop at the edged of laydown trees.
The grub also caught plenty of white bass and largemouth and spots. Wiegmann and I flipped the bushes Big Show Craws and YUM Wooly Bugs and caught a few bass but they weren’t in the bushes thick yet. They should be in the next couple of weeks, though.
Beaver is a great lake to simply “go out and fish” with no worries. White bass, crappie, largemouth, smallmouth and spotted bass, and even giant stripers are all available and often cooperative.
For more information on fishing Beaver Lake or with guide Brad Wiegmann, go to www.bradwiegmann.com.