POTTSVILLE — We all know our most popular fishing lakes, the big Corps of Engineers reservoirs that attract professional and recreational anglers of all stripes.
In their shadows, often just a few miles away, are multitudes of small, unheralded waters whose names most Arkansans have never heard. They are tiny watershed lakes and municipal water supply reservoirs that are hidden in plain sight.
How many times, for example, have you traveled west on Interstate 40 and glimpsed a postage stampsize water tucked among the folds to the north? That’s Ozark City Lake, where in 1997 my friend Mitch Looper of Hackett caught a largemouth bass weighing 14 pounds, 7 ounces.
One place few have seen is Sugarloaf Lake, just west of Midland (about 15 miles south of Fort Smith). I thought it was the sorriest excuse for a fishing lake I ever saw until the day Looper took me there to demonstrate the magic of the swimming jig. He caught a pair of 7-pound-plus largemouths, and I caught a 6-8. A week later, Looper gave an encore performance at Waldron City Lake.
In 2007, Clark Reehm, formerly of Russellville, introduced me to the excellent bass fishing at lakes Ola-Dale, Kingfisher and Huckleberry.
Chris Racey, chief of fisheries for the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, said that small lakes are great overlooked opportunities that offer more than just bass fishing. Almost all support excellent bream populations, and some are great for crappie.
My plunge into kayak fishing rekindled my love for small, remote waters. You can easily reach all sides and corners with a kayak, but many prohibit gasoline-powered motors, which keeps fishing pressure light.
One of those is Galla Creek Lake, which is better known as Pottsville City Reservoir. It occupies a deep hollow less than a mile north of I-40. A small parking area abuts the north side of the dam, providing a breathtaking panorama of cobalt blue against the emerald rise of the Ozarks.
Frank Leone, district fisheries biologist for the Game and Fish Commission, said the commission doesn’t actively manage the lake. The agency stocked bass there for a short while, Leone said, but the efforts were not particularly fruitful. It does have pretty good crappie fishing, Leone added.
I visited Tuesday, when large puffy clouds hung like dappled cloth the sky. It was simply gorgeous and reminded me a lot of South Fork Reservoir, near South Fork, Colo.
I carted my Hobie Revolution kayak about 200 yards down a steep, dirt lane to the launch area. The water was as Leone described — murky, with a reddish tint. A generous amount of water willow skirts the banks on all sides, but that’s about the extent of visible cover.
I started fishing at the dam with a Zoom Tiny Lizard in black with red flake. Water willow mingles with rock in the shallows, but the water at the dam quickly drops to about 40 feet. The bottom is featureless, but my Lowrance graph showed big wads of baitfish with bigger blips hovering beneath and to the sides. Most of the sonar returns clustered at depths of 10 feet or less.
The graph also showed multiple diagonal arches of fish dashing to the bottom as I passed overhead.
I got no bites, and since it was in the heat and glaring light of mid-afternoon, I didn’t expect any. I spent the next couple of hours exploring from one end to the other. I chatted with a young woman who was enjoying a maiden voyage in her own new kayak.
Two other boats were on the water, as well. One was an aluminum flatbottom with an electric motor, and the other was a two-man plastic bassboat manned by Joe Crocker of Hector and Jamie Profitt of Dover.
High water stretched farther up the banks than usual, inundating shoreline bushes inside the water willow belt, especially on the north side. I worked all of that cover thoroughly with a ¼ -ounce Booyah Pond Magic buzzbait with a chartreuse skirt.
That particular buzzbait sounds like an old truck with a creaky fan belt. I expect a bass to blow up on it every second it’s in the water. That happened twice, and I caught two largemouths weighing about 1.5 pounds each.
As the sun arced low to the southwest, it illuminated the lake and its green bowl in soft, richly saturated light. It was the glory hour for photos, so I asked Crocker and Profitt if I could shoot some photos of them fishing.
Crocker said it was his first time to fish the lake in 20 years, and they only caught a couple of dinky largemouths, as well. I wished them luck and went to fish the steep, rocky hillside on the northeast side.
As I paddled to that spot, bass started slamming shad on the surface in open water that was 30-40 feet deep. I cast a Sebile Lipless Seeker crankbait at every boil. I actually hit fish — bass, I believe — on the retrieves, but none actually bit the bait.
The sun finally departed as I cast my tiny lizard one last time to stick next to a rock. A decent size bass bit, but I didn’t connect.
As I loaded my kayak onto my trailer, Crocker appeared. He was exuberant.
“We finally got into them right before sunset,” he said. “We caught at least 20.”
They did it by skipping unweighted, pearl-colored plastic flukes into the grass. The retrieved them back to the edge of the grass and let them fall.
“They jumped all over it,” Crocker said. “It was amazing.”