By Robert H. Cleveland

Our goal, as always on trips to Pickwick Lake, was to catch a trophy smallmouth. After all, when one mentions Pickwick Lake around Mississippi, the first thought is always of the mighty bronze-backed smallies. Rightfully so, too, since the massive impoundment of the Tennessee River is one of the nation's best smallmouth waters.

Because of its location at the southern end of the smallmouth's range, Pickwick gives the fish a very long growing season - and the opportunity to grow to trophy dimensions.

So (I have wondered on many occasions) how can it be that on every trip, all the fish I ever catch are, instead of smallmouths, largemouths?

"The answer is simple," said long-time Pickwick bass guide Roger Stegall of Iuka. "Pickwick's a darn good largemouth lake, too. People just don't think about it that way, because of its smallmouth reputation."

That's an answer that I finally came to terms with thanks to on one torrid dog-day trip to Pickwick about 10 years ago. We were catching big largemouths like crazy. My complaints about not catching smallies quickly turned to hysteria over our good fortune.

Stegall, of course, was parked right next to us, fishing the same structure and pulling in one smallmouth after another. But even he was amazed at what we were pulling up to our boat - and was happy about it, too.

Roger Stegall shows off a Pickwick bigmouth. They'll often fall for the same tactics that take the lake's smallies. Photo by John E. Phillips

"That's the best run on largemouth I've seen on this lake at one time in my life," Stegall said. "I mean, I know it's a good largemouth lake, but - wow!"

The best part about the day was that we were catching the fish in Mississippi. "Wow!" Stegall reiterated. "This is great!"

He was happy about being in Mississippi, since very little of Pickwick's massive body is in fact in the Magnolia State. The lake, which begins at Wheeler Dam in Alabama and ends at Pickwick Dam in Tennessee, is about 65 miles in length, only a small stretch of which - about 10 miles near the north end - touches Mississippi soil. Yet in that small stretch lie some of the lake's best largemouth waters, thanks to three feeder creeks: massive Bear Creek near the Alabama line; smaller Indian Creek in the middle; and Yellow Creek, which serves as headwaters for the mouth of the Tenn-Tom Waterway. Numerous other coves are strewn along this shoreline, too, all of them great areas for pinpointing largemouths in spring and fall, and all contributory to some degree to the excellence of the summer largemouth fishing in the middle of the lake along the deep river-channel structure.

"No doubt about that," Stegall said. "We may not have a lot of the lake's banks in Mississippi, but we got some of the best."

As remarked, we were in the dog days: mid-August, unbelievably hot. It was already in the 90s when we launched at daylight; it topped 100 degrees by 11 a.m. And the warmer it got, the hotter the fishing action became. When the Tennessee Valley Authority turned on the massive turbine generators at the dam to produce the electricity to run the region's air conditioners, the current flowing through the lake increased, and that, in turn, got the bass moving.

Fishing humps along the river with 9-inch plastic worms, we were catching largemouths on practically every throw. In one 30-minute span, my partner and I caught eight bass over 6 pounds, including two between 7 1/2 and 8 pounds.

Stegall, who fishes the lake about 200 days a year, loved it. At one point he said something that got my attention: "You know, as good as this is, you should fish here in the spring, when the largemouth are shallow in April and May - that's when it really is good."

In the years since, we've made many spring and fall trips to test Stegall's assertion - and we're satisfied that he was right.

"It doesn't matter where tournaments are staged during that time of the year - a lot of the boats will run to the Mississippi area," Stegall noted. "In March and April, tournament fishermen target smallmouth. In May, they target largemouth, and Bear Creek and Yellow Creek are two of the lake's best areas."

Bear Creek (we'll note for of for purposes of comparison) is about as big as any of Mississippi's other major lakes and reservoirs. Roughly the same size as Barnett Reservoir in Jackson, it offers thousands of acres of shallow backwater cover - ideal for largemouth fishing.

"You see a lot of tournament boats turn off the lake and head up into Bear Creek in May," said Larry Pugh, District 1 fisheries biologist for the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks. "It probably gets about as much largemouth pressure as any area on the entire lake. You can find a lot of shallow timber, vegetation, roadbeds - if you can think of any kind of largemouth habitat, you can find it in Bear Creek. And Yellow Creek is also the same way - plus it has a good bit of riprap walls to fish where they started the Tenn-Tom channel."

Pugh coordinates the MDWFP's Bass Tournament Program, which tracks fishing quality through tournament report cards. On the basis of a number of factors, Pickwick Lake was ranked No. 1 in the state in quality in 2002. It also ranked No. 1 for the largest bass reported in a program event, an 8.02-pound largemouth.

"You hear more about the big stringers of smallies caught in tournaments, and that's understandable since smallmouth are so treasured up here," Stegall observed. "But more tournaments are won during the year with largemouth than smallmouth. Beginning in May, you better know where to go catch some largemouth if you want to win a tournament."

Stegall has won his share of those contests, and is unsurprisingly reluctant to share his largemouth hotspots. But know this: He's fishing in Mississippi, and quite often, near his home just off Bear Creek.

"That's true," he said, "and I think it's important that the average Mississippi fisherman who comes up to fish knows that. So many of them come up here and get intimidated by the sheer magnitude of this lake. Pickwick is so much bigger than any other lake they normally fish.

"The thing is, if they just pick either Bear or Yellow Creek or even Indian Creek and take the time to learn it, they can find fishing situations they are used to at their home lakes. They can flip. They can pitch. They can crank. They can throw buzzbaits. They can even find some stained water that is more like what they are used to fishing in back home."

In years that see the spawn progress slowly in April, a lot of the big females are still on the beds in the backwaters - and, because of the lake's clear water, sight-fishing those beds is a smart tactical bet.

"I like that a lot, but to be honest, I do better in the last two weeks of April than I do in May," said Tony Allen of Tupelo. "At least I catch more fish then. What fish I do catch in May, though, are bigger. Usually, if I can find fish on the beds in May, they are going to be sows, and with five-fish tournament limits, I can usually spot enough to scratch out a limit.

"But even if I only get two or three, they are big enough that I can pull out and fish for post-spawn fish on a roadbed or other structure and fill out a respectable limit with a crankbait, or by slow-rolling a 1-ounce spinnerbait."

One of my favorite patterns, learned from Stegall, is to fish a crankbait on gravel bars in May in the mouths of coves and other backwater areas. Secondary gravel points are especially productive.

A crankbait in red, brown or root beer fished on the secondary gravel bars can bring forth a quick limit of keeper largemouths above the 15-inch minimum. It can also yield an occasional lunker smallie, so be prepared for a tug.

"Spend some time, and look for roadbeds in the backwater coves," Stegall suggested. "I'm not going to tell you where to look specifically, but there are a lot of them, and you need to find a few. If you like to fish crankbaits or slow-rolling spinnerbaits, you'll love to find a good roadbed in Bear Creek. Then all you have to do is move up and down the bed until you find the depth the fish are holding.

"The key is finding areas that still have roadbeds with gravel on them, or have the remnants of a blown-out bridge. They hold lots of largemouths."

Don't be afraid, biologist Pugh added, to investigate areas far up into Bear Creek. "You can go miles up that creek, and find some other backwater areas," he asserted. "That's one of the first things I tell anyone who calls the office wanting to know where to fish at Pickwick."