Over time, Alford and I have come to call the combination of Wolf, Bee and Little Eagle "the Yazoo Trinity." They're excellent places at which to start your oxbow exploration -- but by no means should they be the only ones you visit.

Several free-standing oxbows exist along the course of the Mississippi. Eagle Lake, north of Vicksburg, and Lake Washington, at Glen Allen, are two perfect examples of oxbows formerly joined to the main river that now never connect to it. Lying east of the main river levee, both provide fishermen with consistent fishing conditions throughout the spring.

Lake Washington is famous for its catfish and well known for its bream, and it can yield up some of the best crappie fishing in the state during the spring spawn or late-summer trolling. And it's one of the most overlooked bass fishing lakes in the state.

During late May and, especially, in early-to-mid June, Washington offers an outstanding bass fishery. The key: the timing of the bream's first bedding period.

"When they bed and the first hatch occurs, it's only a day or two before the bass find them," said Sidney Montgomery of Madison, whose family has a getaway house at Washington. "You can see the bass running through the beds, feeding on the fry. All you have to do is get in there near them and fish the edges with either a topwater bait, a spinnerbait or -- heck -- anything, when they're feeding. You can have a ball.

"Thing about it is, you never see a lot of bass fishermen on this lake. There's always a lot of people catfishing and bream fishing. But bass fishing is overlooked."

At Eagle Lake, the bass spawn early, and by the beginning of May in most years, and by midmonth for sure, are past that slowed-down bite immediately following a bedding cycle. The fish are active and have dispersed from the spawning areas.

"It takes some looking, but the great thing about Eagle is that you really don't have to look too hard to figure out what the fish are doing," explained Montgomery, who added regarding the Mississippi side of the circular oxbow, "First, forget about the deep side -- there're some fish there, but the biggest concentrations will be over on the shallow side and on the end past Garfields Landing. Those are the spawning areas.

"My favorite May pattern is to move out to the isolated cypress trees on the outside edges of Australia Island. There're hundreds of them, and they provide you an easy course to follow, like in golf. You just pick out an area and start moving tree-to-tree, using whatever lure you have the most confidence in. If you like flipping or pitching, then a jig or a worm is great; if you prefer casting, and have the talent to skip a cast under some of the low cypress limbs, a spinnerbait is great."

In Montgomery's view, it's always a good idea to keep your eyes on the thicker cover, like buckbrush, closer to the bank for signs of activity. "If you see shad flitting around back there, you might want to abandon the isolate cover and go to the brush and work it with either a worm or a spinnerbait," he offered. "The bigger fish will come off of the isolated timber, but if the shad are in the brush, you can catch more fish in the cover."