Lake Hamilton fluke | Arkansas Democrat Gazette (2024)

Friday morning was almost like a church service on Lake Hamilton, with only the most faithful attending.

One other parishioner was in a pew somewhere deep in the sanctuary, and another waited in his truck as I backed Tyrone Phillips and his Ranger bass boat into the water at the Entergy boat ramp. It was quiet and peaceful before dawn as the eastern sky came aglow like stained glass. We seemingly had the most popular recreational lake in Arkansas to ourselves.

"This place will be a freaking zoo this weekend," I said to Phillips as we motored across many surface miles of uninhabited water.

Phillips loves to visit Lake Hamilton as often as possible this time of year. Bass fishing is notoriously difficult in the Arkansas sauna in August, but it is often excellent on Lake Hamilton. The lake supports massive amounts of baitfish, and bass eat them voraciously on the surface.

On this day, however, a beautifully disguised serpent roamed this garden. Clouds. They offered comfort and refuge, but they would be the day's undoing.

"The bass like it when it's sunny," Phillips said. "The hotter the better. These clouds might keep them down, but it'll make it comfortable for us."

As we idled past Carpenter Dam, Phillips pointed to a couple of places where he often begins bass tournaments.

"A lot of times I get five right here and then move on to find bigger fish," Phillips said.

Phillips pointed to the barrels that mark the restricted area in front of Carpenter Dam.

"A lot of times I catch them on these barrels right here," he added. "When it's sunny, they get under them for the shade."

We didn't fish that area Friday. Our first stop was a line of docks along a boardwalk beneath a long row of condominiums in Hot Spring Creek. Phillips adroitly skipped a soft plastic plastic fluke beneath the docks and walkways. The color was pearl with a chartreuse tail. I threw a red buzzbait with a Zoom Baby Brush Hog as a trailer.

Watching Phillips skip the fluke was mesmerizing. His technique put the bait deep in the shade. From the back of the boat, I did a passable job of doing the same with the buzzbait, but I can only do it whipping my right arm across my left side with an old-school pistol grip rod. A few casts were good enough to earn grunts of approval from Phillips.

"One thing about you is that you actually like to fish," Phillips said, amused at my self congratulations for good casts. "You don't treat it like something you have to do for your job."

"Oh, man, if I couldn't fish, life wouldn't be worth living," I said. "I need it as much as I need food, water, and oxygen."

"I feel the same way," Phillips said, suddenly becoming very animated. "I mean, I know a lot of people that enjoy fishing, but a lot of them could take it or leave it. I have to have it. I can't get enough. I'd be out here every day if I could."

Phillips caught a small Kentucky bass at the first stop. Three swiped at my buzzbait, but they wouldn't take it. I switched to a jerkbait.

"If you catch something with that, you'll teach me some useful information for future reference," Phillips said. "I catch a lot of fish on jerkbaits out here in the spring, but I put them away in the summer."

They will stay put away because I didn't get a strike during the short time I used it.

Our next stop was a dock-filled cove. Phillips picked up a couple of bass thee, but it was clear that the dock bite was out of play. The few fish Phillips caught on docks were small. Nevertheless, I continued studying Phillips's fluke skipping technique. He uses a spinning rod spooled with 15-pound PowerPro yellow braid.

"I like braid for this because I catch fish I didn't use to catch with monofilament," Phillips said, explaining that braided line does not stretch like its monofilament equivalent. That means you can set the hook surely with longer casts.

I finally figured out the skipping technique. With the bail open and a finger pinching the line to the rod, you flick the rod as if pitching a ball underhand. If you release the line at the right point in the arc, the bait will hit the water at a level angle and skip across the surface like a stone. With practice, I intend to become proficient at it.

Finally we found what we sought in open water on the main lake side of an island. Bass schooled in short bursts. For this, Phillips used a small stickbait from Temu. It has an upswept bill that makes it rise when jerked, which more naturally mimics a baitfish trying to escape a predator. He cast at a boil, flicked his wrists a couple of times and loaded the rod with the weight of a bass.

"That's what I like about this bait," Phillips said. "If you get it anywhere near a bass, he's going to eat it."

Bass began schooling more frequently, but randomly. Phillips spotted a school surfacing a couple of hundred yards away. He fired up his outboard and sped toward them, shutting off the motor well before we reached them. He usually caught one before the school sounded, and then another school would surface a couple of hundred yards elsewhere. This began a merry game of chase. Duck hunters do the same thing. They scurry toward ducks that landed over there, spook them off the water and then scurry to another group that landed over there. It wears you out.

"Only thing I know to do is see if we can catch some off bridge pilings," Phillips said.

Bridge pilings can be productive in the summer because they provide shade. Phillips to my surprise, Phillips threw the fluke. It's not a surface lure, but used weightless, as Phillips does, it works just beneath the surface. He caught a couple.

I switched to a Zell Pop, a surface lure with a concave face that spits and chugs. I made a perfect cast past the edge of the bridge pier and sputtered the lure all the way down the side. With each pop, Phillips grunted, "Now!"

We expected a fish to hit every pop, but none did.

At 10:30 a.m., we called it quits. It wasn't an epic day, but Phillips caught about 10, so it wasn't bad, either.

In a weird kind of way, it felt kind of holy.