Bear Grease - Ep. 123: THIS COUNTRY LIFE - Bream Fishing

Episode Date: June 30, 2023

On this week's episode of THE This Country Life podcast, our buddy Brent talks us through one of his absolute favorite things -- bream fishing. He covers everything from catching the little buggers to what may be his real favorite part of the process (that would be eating them). So listen up and get the crickets ready, you're not going to want to miss any of this!  Connect with Brent and MeatEater MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

First Lights fieldwear collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues when the season ends. Products built for early mornings, full days and real use. Hard wearing where they need to be versatile where it matters. No shortcuts. Just gear designed for the work that earns the season. Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new fieldwear gear at firstlight.

Welcome to This Country Life. I'm your host, Brent Reeves. From Coon Hunting to Trotlining and just general country living, I want you to stay a while as I share my stories and country skills that will help you beat the system. This Country Life is proudly presented as part of Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best outdoor podcast the Airways have to offer. All right, friends, pull you up a chair or drop that tailgate. I think I got a thing or two to teach you.

Brim fishing. Brim fishing is an absolute hoot, and when you're done fishing, the best part is still ahead. When I'm shooting ducks, even after I've shot a limit, I always want one more group to work in the decoys. Fifteen minutes after the gobbler stops flopping,

I want to do it all over again. A successful elk, deer, or bear hunt is the same. I'm kind of sad it's over. I love it, and eating all those critters is a thing. definite reward, but catching a mess of brim, man, while it is as fun as a bushel basket full of puppies, catching brim and eating a mess of those jokers is my absolute favorite. I'm going to tell you how easy it is for you to enjoy this, and it's one of the best ways to

spend time with your family and friends. And you get to eat. But first, I'm going to tell you a story. Located in south central Cleveland County, Arkansas, and four miles north-northeast of our house was Crane's Lake. A small Oxbow Lake formed eons ago when the planets aligned and the heavens gave birth to the perfect Blue Gildbrim factory. And the canary hole? Oh, well, it was the perfect spot on the perfect lake. We named it after the small, brightly colored yellow birds that we called.

canaries. They lived all over that lake during the summer. Later, I would learn their real name is Prothonotary Warbler. Ben Batten would call them Protanatoria Citria. Ben's my friend and the assistant director of the Arkansas Game and Fish. He's got a master's degree in animal smartology. He's handier than a pocket on a shirt and he's always grading my pronunciations of the Latin names for animals. Last week he scored me eight out of ten on the bullfrog. Anyway, these pretty little bright yellow birds with the dark wings spend their summers mostly in the eastern half of the United States and they winter in Mexico, Cuba and South America. If I had wings, I believe I would too.

Well, that summer, in 1978, there seemed like a jillion of them around the edge of the lake, concentrated particularly on the east side. It was within easy paddling distance of the dirt boat ramp where we'd launched our boat and always the starting point of where we like to fish. Our plan was to fill our brim basket with supper, armed with nothing more than a John boat, a couple of fly rods, and two buckets of crickets. Spring rains had caused an overflow of water from the Slean River

that filled the sluves and bios beyond capacity. Now, when the water goes down, that rich fertile bottom land and the soil and the nutrients found within them always make the summer lake fishing better by boosting the growth of all the critter, and what they fed on within the confines of the lake, especially bluegills. I sat in the back of the boat and watched my dad paddle us across that lake, and the air was slap full of those yellow birds and the sweet sounds that they were singing.

As we fished down the east bank, the bites were few and far between until we reached the area that would be remembered and talked about for the rest of my father's life. There were four or five dead sweet gum trees that stood at the water's edge. The trees have been dead for several years, making some real good fish structure. The snags that were left standing had been the home of countless woodpeckers over the years, and the canaries had taken advantage of it and were nesting in every available hole. They were everywhere and buzzing all around us. Dad dropped his cricket near one of the treetops, and his cork disappeared immediately.

He pulled him in, and we were surprised at how big he was. He tied his end of the boat, re-baited, and caught another one before I could get my end-tied. He pulled in his third fish before I finally got my hook in the water, and no sooner had the slack gone out of my line. I was taking the line back in and catching my own big blue gill. The canary sang and flew around our boat, and huge brim continued to bite. With every fish we pulled out of the water, another one would take its place. It was like they were fighting amongst themselves for a chance to eat crickets. Taking them off the hook and dropping them in the brim basket that hung over the side of the boat

was repeated until fish would no longer fit in that basket. It was constant and it didn't last an hour. All the brim we'd caught seemed to have been made from the same mold. They were the biggest dad said he'd ever seen and it only took 55 to fill that basket. Putting my thumb on his back keeping that dorsal fin locked down and my fiends. under his belly, I could barely hold one secure enough to take off the hook. That's how big they were. Now, I don't know how many we could have coughed that day.

There's no telling. But when number 55 hit and filled that basket, they were still biting as hard and fast as they had when number one went in there. We went home, cleaned fish, froze what we wasn't going to eat that night, and had one more good supper. Fish, fried taters, fresh onion and hush puppies, man, I can taste it right now. The next day we went back to the canary hole, but it wasn't nearly as good as it was the first day. It never is. Sequels seldom surpass or even equal the original. It's hard to catch lightning in a bottle twice, and even though the original cast of Canary Hole,

Brent and Buddy Reeves had returned for Canary Hole too, it just wasn't the same. Instead of filling the basket with 55, it took 56. And that's just how that happened. Now I run into a few folks through the years that liked to fish. A whole bunch of folks I'd have to say. And we'd get to talking about what we like to fish for. And I'd like to fish for just about anything that swims. And they'd ask me what my favorite was, and I'd tell them brim fishing.

Some had never had the opportunity to bring them fish, and others were somewhat dismissive of it, like it was a, a waste of their time or beneath them. And I don't know that I'd let those folks borrow a drink water. How could you look down on the greatest tasting fish that ever swum of swim? Name something that you like to eat and give me the choice of that or fried brim, and I'm going to pick brim every time. I could eat it every day.

But before we eat them, let's talk a little more in depth about what we're fishing for. Bluegill brim, green sunfish, also known as rice paddy slicks, Red-eared sunfish, that's the government brim. They didn't invent them, but they were preferred in early stocking efforts around the south and earned that moniker. The last one is the brightly orange-colored long-eared sunfish known as the pumpkin seeds. They're all sunfish and in the centrarchity family of fish. Locally, we call them all brim and our favorites that we target to catch and eat are bluegills and pumpkin seeds.

Now, red ears, they grow the biggest followed by bluegills and pumpkin seeds. and then the slicks and then the pumpkin seeds. The pumpkin seeds, they are the absolute fiercest eaters. They nearly always hit your bait like they're starving and pull way beyond what you'd think. I've always said that if they weighed a pound, they'd crawl out on the bank and take over the world. Get a little current in the river when you're catching them

and you'll think you're about to set some kind of record, and then you pull up a fish that you could lay in one hand and cover it up with the other. They're fighters, and they taste so good. Now, during the early summer here in Arkansas, you'll find them bedding up to lay eggs in groups called brim beds or colonies. The male fish will go to the bottom and dig out a divot about the size of a fat-hit pitching wedge. The female will swim by, checking out the new digs, and hang around for a little light cordon. With love figuratively in the air and literally in the water, she'll drop off anywhere from 12 to 60,000 eggs in Vamoos, leaving the house and the youngings for packing.

happy to look after. That heifer ought to be ashamed. The good thing is, all his single dad next door neighbors are doing the same thing, literally next door. The whole cul-de-sac is a literal Donnybrook of Fisticus. That colony can host dozens of beds and all the fathers are in town, duking it out with anything and everything that tries to get in there and snatch the babies out of the crib. Now, that's when you find them bedding up and the bites are so aggressive. That's what we'll shake it down at the canary hole when me and dad were stacking fish in that brim basket like cordwood. They don't cotton the trespassers and will square up with just about anything until they run it off, eat it, or it eats them. I know three ways to find them that are successful.

First, let's narrow down where we're going to find our potential bedding areas. Go to the shallows, usually near the edge of the bank out to as much as 20 feet deep. My experience has found that anywhere from 3 to 6 feet is pretty normal. And I'll talk about the two old school methods that we've used over the years. The third one is a cool way to do it, and it will get you on the fish quicker, especially if you're fishing in an unfamiliar area or time is a limiting factor for your fishing trip. It's also more expensive by requiring some equipment that wasn't issued to you at birth. Old school way number one, use your eyes.

Just fish along until you find them. If you come upon a spot and see that your cricket supply is going down at or near the same rate, your basket is filling up, stop the boat, for you have arrived. If you think back a few minutes to that canary hole story, that's how we did it. We started fishing down the edge of the lake and weren't catching anything until all at once we started loading the boat. Number two is to use your smiller, your proboscis, your nose. When conditions are optimal, like little to no wind, you can actually smell and pinpoint a brim bed. It's much harder when there's a breeze, but you'll immediately know that you're in the right area. If the wind's blowing, you'll just have to start drying crickets till you find them.

The fragrance is aromatic, subtle, and it's not unpleasant at all. Some folks describe it as having the fragrance of a fresh-cut watermelon. Now, I can't argue against that description, but I can't say, say I never thought to describe it that way. It smells like we're fixing to eat fish to me. My dad pointed it out to me several times when I was a kid and I've never forgotten it. It's one of those things that if you ever get it cataloged in your cranium, you'll immediately recognize it regardless of how long it is between encounters. It is there to stay. Number three is one that I've never done, but I've heard about it and watched some real

interesting videos on YouTube demonstrating the technique. Side image and sonar will give you a real-time picture displayed on your depth finder that you can watch as you cruise slowly along the bank looking for the neighborhood of brimbeds. The bottom will be slick as a whistle, and then all at once, you'll see a brim bed that looks like little craters on your screen showing you where they are. You can mark it as a GPS point or float close enough to drop off a marker buoy. Then you need to back off a little bit and commence descending in the crickets to see if any single dads are down there looking to rumble. Sometimes you can even see the fish garden the nest.

It's pretty cool. Cove's and protected areas of lakes and slow-moving portions of rivers are good places to start looking for beds. The water temperature needs to be bumping close to 70 degrees for the fish to start bedding. And if you can add a full moon in that mix, pardon you better send somebody to the store for some cornmeal because y'all about to load the boat. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls in building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called prime cuts. Now, I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use. I'm not going to go, I'm not going to win a turkey

calling contest. It's just not going to happen. But when I run this call, I get the sounds that gobblers are looking for. I have a great turkey hunting track record. If you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not going to win calling contests, right? That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps's cut, and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out Prime Cuts at Phelps game calls.com.

I think you'll be glad you did, and you'll find out that the Steve Ronella cut is an easy to use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises, and getting action. Okay. We know what we're after. We know where and how to find them. What are we going to catch them with? If you listened last week,

you heard me say how inexpensive it was to gig frogs. Well, catching the brim is no different. You can cut your own pole, catch your own bait, and fashion your own hooks from wire. Heck, you could even make your own fishing line from thread. You can catch brim from the, bank or by wading, you don't need a boat. You could turn this into an amazingly fun DIY project

with the kids this summer, teaching them survival skills that are enjoyable. Have them make their own fishing rig. Catch one and then show them how to cook it. They'd love it, and it would get them eyeballs off the video screen. Brim are just about everywhere there's water, so accessibility can't be a reason not to go. You just heard me say that you don't need any money to do this, so watch stopping you. If you look hard enough, you can always find a reason not to do something, but brim fishing, come on. Now, here's my setup, and I have two. One I use most of the time, and that's my fly rod. It's a nine-foot-five-weight made for fly fishing. Ideally, a smaller three- or four-weight rod is better. They're more limber, and you can get a lot of good action playing the fish after he's

hooked. My setup has a real spool with fly line that matches the weight of my rod, and If you're building your own rig, just look at the weight listed on your rod and match it with the package of line that it's indicated for. It'll say on there, and believe it or not, it makes a difference. I like floating line, and on the end where my hook goes, I'll tie a leader line that's marked to appropriate for my fly line and reel, and then add a short length of smaller line, maybe two pound test, and that's called tip it. Maybe, I don't know, three feet long. And that's where I'll tie my hook and place my spit shot. Now for years I used nothing but a small cork that had my leader threaded through a hole in the middle

and held in place with a separate peg inserted in the same hole preventing the cork from moving up and down. There's lots of different styles of corks and bobbers, but they're all doing the same job of maintaining your bait at a constant depth and giving you a visual clue that your daily limit is about to be reduced in number by one more fish. I could do a whole podcast on different types and styles of corks and bobbers. Plastic, phone, porcupine quills, turkey feathers. There's all kinds of items that folks use. Also, I don't want you fly fishing purists to be left out,

so I'll talk about strike indicators too. Well, guess what, Mr. Fancy Pants Fly Fisherman? The difference between a cork and a strike indicator is the same difference between a fiddle and a violin. It's the cat using it. However, I have a new favorite that I was recently introduced to by my Barre-Grease Render brother and fly-fishing guide, Josh Spillmaker. Y'all know Josh.

He looks like he could do stunts for Yukon Cornelius with that red beard and handlebar mustache so big it's got its own zip code. But Joshua and I were fly-fishing for trout recently, and he handed me an in-line strike indicator that's cork for the rest of us, made by the folks at Oros. fly fishing. That's O-R-O-S fly-fishing. These folks are based out of Montana, and as far as I'm concerned, they have created the world's most perfect cork. It's a two-piece foam bobber that has a short threaded stud on one side and a threaded hole on the other. The stud is slotted, and as luck would have it, you just lay your line in that slot. Put the two halves together and tighten the side with the threaded hole, keeping your line straight, unkinked, and

held in place with tension. Need to change depths, just loosen the whole side a bit and slide that unit to where you want it and retighten. I'm convinced, without a shadow of a doubt, that if we hadn't already gone to the moon, the Oro Strike Indicator Design Team could get us there. Good job, folks. Now hooks, my dad liked a long shank number eight wire hook, and I do too. We fished around a lot of old tree tops and structure, and if you happen to snag a limb or something solid on the bottom, nine times out of ten, you could pull that hook and it was straightened out enough to come loose. Then all you had to do was rebend it and keep on fishing. A stronger hook would dig in and you'd break your line trying to free it up or require you

to cuss it off losing your rigging. And while I was retined, my dad would be catching fish and keeping score. You can't be in the game sitting on the bench. That long shank on the hook was easier to get a hold of and removed from a fish than a shorter one too. Now all you need is a small split shot, put it about two or three inches above that hook, and you're ready to get busy giving them brim the sore mouth. My other rig is an ultra-light fishing rig with a spinning reel attached to a five-foot rod. It's easy to rig and cast accurately, and it's fun to reel and fight those clowns to the boat.

Some folks will go with a jig pole that's up to nine feet. It's just whatever you want. The advantage of being able to cast into a brim bed, instead of sitting over it, especially if the fish are shallow, will keep your boat further away from where you're fishing so you're not as likely to spook to fish off. Now, the last method is the tried and true cane pole. It's probably the image that most folks have when brim fishing is mentioned.

And I could build a house on a good-sized barn from all the cane poles I made and fished with growing up. A fellow could use the tube before if that's all he had. For that matter, you don't even need a rod. Just chunk a line with a baited hook out amongst them and well-rope their little fannies in when they get the chomping on your bait. It's so easy to catch them, I wonder sometimes how we didn't catch them all, because we sure tried.

Now, we've got a rod rigged up and we're ready to fish except for one thing. We need bait. You can use artificial or natural. Artificial baits include brim flies, jigs, beetle spins, rooster tails. Man, the list just goes on and on. They'll bite anything they think they can get the jaws around even more so if it's trespassing in their bed during the spawn. Oh yeah, don't forget about gummy bears. My son was six years old and him and my dad were sitting on the pond bank fishing one evening with a few crickets that was left over and eating gummy bears.

It didn't take them long to run out of crickets, but hunter wasn't ready to quit fishing. So he handed his grandpa gummy bear and said, here, Paul, put this on the hook. Well, being a good grandpa, my dad did what hunter asked, and they caught fish with gummy bears until they were gone. Dad said he didn't know who ate more of them, the brim or the boy. Bate that tastes good to the fisherman, too. Well, that's a bonus. A few years later, that boy and I were fishing on the White River with a guide.

We were floating with the current for a trout using cooked shrimp for bait that the guide had brought. Now, after a little bit, the guide gets to grumbling and digging around in the boat looking for that second bag of boiled shrimp and he can't find it. I started helping him look. Under boat seats and the live well, behind the tackle boxes, everywhere, no luck. Finally, I told Hunter, look under his seat and see if that shrimp was there. And he looked at me like he'd just been sentenced to life in front of a BB gun fire squad. When he stood up, the missing bag of boiled shrimp was located and it was empty.

But natural bait, that's my favorite. Growing up here it was worms and crickets. Some folks would raise the worms in old chest-type freezers or a junked-out ice box laid on inside. My wife and kids and probably most of humanity would call that a refrigerator. Anyway, you fill it with dirt and meal scraps and cut a double handful of worms loose in there and they'll do their thing making more bait. Me, I prefer crickets.

They're less messy than worms and, boy, those brim will wear them out. Now, we'd stop by the bait shop and get a couple tubes of crickets. That's 100 crickets each. and hit the lake of the river. There's a million ways to put a cricket on the hook, but there's only one right way. Catch one cricket out of the bucket, and looking at his back,

job the point of that hook under his shirt collar, that's his thorax, which is right below his head, and run it through his body, that's his abdomen, and have the point just barely poking out of his exhaust pipe. You know what that is. It's important that you only bring one cricket out of the bucket at a time

because he can get dangerous. Crickets Dangerous Check this out Dad and I were on Saline River one afternoon After fishing most of the day Soaking crickets

Till they plum fell off the hook With very few bites We were fishing for our supper Or we'd already quit We were running low on bait And all of a sudden We started smashing the brim Those big fat rascals

Squirters we called them You know big blue gills That pee when you pull them up out of the water You know why they pee, a stream when you take a hold of them? Well, me neither. And I asked my friendly neighborhood master's degree of animal smartology, assistant director Ben Batten, and even he didn't know. Brim peeing and stone-inch, two of life's greatest mysteries. Anyway, back to the fishing. It was like they'd flipped a switch. They started biting like crazy, so with only a few crickets each,

we had to make every one of them count. If one got out of the bucket while you were grabbing another, you had to catch the loose one and stick him back in the bucket and then bait your hook. Now, my dad was in a cricket and fish catching frenzy when he accidentally grabbed two out of the bucket. He was like a wild man in front of the boat trying to run the hand-steered troll the motor, get his hook baited, and back in the water. I watched him stick that extra cricket he'd caught in the corner of his mouth holding it gently but firmly like a mule would eating a cactus. and at the same time bait his hook and make a perfect roll cast between two cypress trees and immediately catch a fish.

It was a moment in time that stood still. When he set the hook, he slowly turned and looked at me, one eyebrow raised and a know-it-all smirk on his face, all the while holding that cricket in the corner of his mouth like Clint East Wood held a cigar. One tick of the clock later and he was cussing, spitting the cricket out, trying to get his fish in the boat and wiping blood off his lip where that cricket bit of hole in it. Don't try this at home, kids. You'll mess around and get a hole in your lip and a boat ramp named after you. The only thing left to do is to clean them and cook them.

Lay one of them fat rascals out on a table, grab yourself a tablespoon, and get the scraping against the grain, pulling all those scales off. Your fishing partner can get his pocket knife and start gutting and taking the heads off while you scrape. Be sure you get them all because nothing looks nastier than a cooked fish with scales left on it. Somebody's going to say, oh, just filet them. And when they do, I'm going to say, oh, they ought to be in jail.

Thou shalt not deprive Brent of the fried brim tail. What you should do is have the pocket knife man making a cut along each side of that dorsal fin and removing it before you cook it. Once you get it out of the hot grease and it gets cool enough to chow down on, on, that's always my first bite. Brim backstrap. You can't beat it. We talked about how to cook fish back on the catching catfish with trot lines episode,

and I shared our family recipe with the meal that we mix up. And go back and give it a listen if you want to use that one, but there's lots of pre-made mixes or just about any grocery store to have one, and they're good too. But really, all you need is yellow cornmeal, hot grease, and salt and pepper. Those fish, they got a lot of. a flavor of their own that can't be beat. The main thing is, just get out and do it.

Grab your youngings or your neighbors, some old folks. Get them involved, whether it's catching them or just eating them. Catching and preparing your food is a joy and it's multiplied when you share it, just like sharing these stories. I can't tell y'all how appreciative I am from all the encouraging messages and reviews we've been getting. You folks just keep sharing it and posting those reviews and maybe someone that wouldn't have normally run across it or see it and they can enjoy it too. You ain't got to be from the country, to be country.

This is Brent Reeves, signing off. Y'all be careful. First Lights Fieldwear collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues when the season ends. Products built for early mornings, full days in real use, hard wearing where they need to be versatile where it matters. cuts, just gear designed for the work that earns the season. Built to perform, built to last.

Check out. First Light's new fieldware gear at firstlight.com.