First fishing report of summer — It’s hot

From the coast to Tennessee, fishermen are enjoying success

For the first time in weeks, we can bring you a positive fishing report from all over Mississippi.

Bluegill? You bet. The bite’s been great since the weekend’s super moon had them back on the beds in all areas of the state and in all kinds of water — farm ponds, oxbow lakes, reservoirs, rivers and streams.

Crappie? Yep. The trolling has turned on at the four North Mississippi Corps of Engineer lakes and at Barnett Reservoir. Bandit 300 crankbaits are hammering the slabs on the deep contour changes.

Largemouth? Yes sir, even those finicky summer fish, and we’re not just talking small surface schoolies either. The big ones are being caught on Carolina rigs and deep crankbaits, the former if they are in deep structure and the latter if they are suspended over it. Plus, on lakes with plenty of surface vegetation near deep water, a frog is getting it done.

Catfish? Oh man, is it ever on. The slow-starting hand-grabbing season has finally started producing giant flatheads, and pole (rod) fishermen and juggers are catching plenty around the shallows where the big flatheads are spawning.

Want more? OK, let’s go south to the Gulf of Mexico.

Red snapper? It’s been good, but the season ends Friday.

Specks and reds? It’s been all you can get for speckled trout in the Biloxi marsh, and schools of bull reds are all around the barrier islands for sport fishing.

Tripletails? The summer sensation has kicked off again and is producing a lot of excellent trips.

“Right now, the only thing that can go wrong down here is the weather,” said Capt. Sonny Schindler of Shore Thing Charters in Bay St. Louis. “We’ve had four or five boats out most days, and all have had limits by mid-morning and we move on to either the redfish or tripletail, whichever the client prefers, and sometimes we have time for both.

“It’s just been one of those periods where it really doesn’t matter what we target, if the weather allows it, we can get it.”

As good a bet as that action has been, fishermen are having equal or even better success inland.

“I honestly can’t remember a better month for catfish as the one we’ve had in June on Barnett and at Eagle Lake,” said Larry Reynolds of Jackson. “I guess I’ve caught about 300 on Barnett in 10 trips, and we were culling big fish just to keep the 1½ to 2 pounders we like to eat. And I got a buddy with a cabin on Eagle Lake and he called and said we could do that good over a weekend over there, and he was about right. We hammered them. Shrimp was the ticket at both.

“Funny thing about it, when we were cleaning fish on his patio, his neighbor came in from Lake Washington and he had two ice chests, one full of nice catfish and the other with some of the finest bluegill you’ll ever see. So we got up the next morning and went bream fishing Sunday at Eagle and we quit with exactly 100 slab bluegill. They were bedding and we found them in two places in 3 feet of water. We were done in two hours.”