After several hours of hunting big bass at Maynor Creek Water Park and finding only a few small ones willing to play ball, the decision was made to move to Plan B -- as in "bream."

Outdoor writers (at least, those smart or seasoned enough to know this sort of thing) always have a Plan B when making a trip to a fishing hole. The money spent to travel to a lake plus the time taken out of one's workweek equal an imperative to return with a story.

On this trip to the 450-acre lake, the backup plan called for pulling out the crickets and worms, switching to ultralight gear and bobbers, and finding some bream beds. It being May, this just made sense -- especially to someone who grew up in south Mississippi at the very time that the Pat Harrison Waterway District was being developed. I knew to bring the bream gear, and, while bass fishing, to keep an eye and at least one nostril on the alert for a bream bed or two.

"Let's start over there off that point near the campground," I told my partner. "That's where we both thought we had smelled a bream bed. Let's see if we can sniff it out, then follow it upwind until we find the fish."

The plan went perfectly. Within a few minutes of staying on high bypass on the trolling motor, we found the sweet-and-sour scent of a bed, an aroma best described as a mixture of natural decay and fresh-cut watermelon. In another few minutes, we were anchored at casting distance from the source.

A cricket man, I loaded up with a small foam bobber and a cricket set at 3 feet to fish in the 4 feet of water and made a cast. My partner, a worm fan, loaded his line with a glob of red worms and tossed his a few feet from mine, let the weight take it deep and then reeled up to tightline on the bottom.

The cork disappeared first, and I set the hook. While I played the fish quickly out of the bedding area, John set the hook on another. We got the fish to the boat and were presently holding two different species while we wore two broad smiles. We had the bream double: a fat bull bluegill and a longer and meaner redear. The bluegill took the cricket; the shellcracker ate the worm.

Before rebaiting, I made an observation. "We can reach this bed from the bank -- and it's lunchtime," I proposed. "Let's park it, get out the ice chests for seats and tightline for big redear like that one you caught."

Brilliant idea -- except for one thing: The action was so quick that we couldn't get our lunches down. Every time we'd bait up and cast, we'd barely get seated again before a fish would be trying to run off with one of our rods. We were using two each and couldn't keep up.

Before that bed played out, we pulled in 48 keeper-sized redear (if it doesn't fill the palm, it doesn't qualify) and 27 bluegills. Then we found a second bed, and recorded about half the numbers.