Photo by Tom Evans

When you set the hook on a full-grown bluegill, the line immediately stretches tight and sings as it slices diagonally through the water. On the other end of the line, the big bull bream instinctively turns its broad, flat body at a right angle to resist pressure from above. This visceral reflex by the bream gives anglers a fight certain to bring smiles to the faces of children and adults alike.

Anglers across Alabama catch enormous numbers of panfish throughout the year, and this is especially true in the Mobile Delta. The fishing is so good there that the region is considered a bream destination. In addition to attracting fishermen from afar for the purpose of filling coolers, this fishery also supports bream tournaments! As a result, the Delta's panfish also put smiles on the faces of winning tournament anglers.

Covering more than 20,000 acres of water, the Delta's small rivers, huge coves, creeks, lakes, bays and swamps form ideal shallow-water habitat to support great numbers of bream. The 12-mile-wide Delta stretches for 30 miles from Mobile Bay up the Mobile, Tensaw, Alabama and Tombigbee rivers. Tides influence fishing along the way, so the waters of the Delta vary from fresh to salt.

There are also two Delta angling habitats, which are separated by Interstate Highway 65. The Lower Delta has slow-moving rivers and streams with large shallow bays; above the interstate, the Upper Delta's many small streams flow through wooded areas with blown-down trees and cypresses with their associated knees. The Upper Delta is also less affected by salinity.

Dave Armstrong, district fisheries supervisor for the Division of Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries, attributes the Delta's excellent bream fishery to a combination of fertile water flowing from a watershed covering 44,000 square miles, the area's nutrient-rich soil, the unique habitats available, and a smorgasbord of forage.

"Each district has certain target species based on their importance to anglers," Armstrong explained. "Based on our creel data, bream are not very far behind largemouth bass. So we rank bream, as a group species, just below bass as an important sportfish to anglers in the Delta. For that reason, we typically sample bream in the spring and/or fall. We track abundance, growth rates, relative size and health of the fish. Over the long-term we have collected a lot of data on bream."

Armstrong's data show that the Delta's panfish species prefer different habitats. Bluegills, warmouth ("goggle-eyes") and redspotted sunfish ("stumpknockers") do well in the more timbered and somewhat more upland environment above I-65, while redears ("shellcrackers") dominate the Lower Delta.