Greg Jones of Kingston hoists a stringer of fat shellcrackers from Chickamauga Lake, which many anglers overlook as a bream fishery. Photo by Terry Madewell

Greg Jones of Kingston, Tennessee, is certainly an all-around outdoorsman. He’s a highly successful fisherman for several species of fish, including crappie and outlandish-sized stripers. He harvests numerous deer in the state and even travels around the country hunting for big game. He has his own deer processing business.

But during the month of May, this outdoorsman turns into a fanatical bream fisherman. Yes, that’s right: bream. Specifically, he hunts down huge bluegills and whopper-sized shellcrackers on one of the best and most overlooked bream fishing waters in the Volunteer State -- Chickamauga Lake.

I grew up fishing this lake for bream, crappie, catfish and largemouths. However, I never knew what the full potential of this lake held until I fished with Greg Jones last spring. He focuses his efforts on the upper end of the lake because that’s closer to his home. When fished properly, though, the entire lake will produce huge catches of bluegills and shellcrackers of eye-popping size.

“Through the years, I’ve developed a system of fishing that enables me to cover a lot of territory very quickly. When fishing the spawning season, around the full moon in May specifically, you can make large catches of huge fish quickly. Actually, you can bream fish very successfully any time in May and well into June on Chickamauga. The key is to have a good game plan of how and where to fish. Then stay mobile, looking for the hotspots.

“While I’ll admit that fishing around the full moon may produce more bedding fish, it’s really not essential for success. The entire month is usually great for bream fishing, unless we’re having a lot of high, muddy water. In my opinion, the difference between fishing the dark of the moon versus the full moon is catching plenty of fish on the dark or partial moon, or way, way too many on the full moon,” he said with a big grin.

Jones’ process is simple, but it’s one I’d never seen before. Most anglers use crickets or worms for springtime shallow-water fish. Some will, of course, use fly rods and poppers or sinking spiders.

Jones, however, uses a smallish jig, about 1/16 to 1/32 weight with a No. 6 hook. Then he puts a small piece of night crawler on the hook. The night crawler is no more than about an inch piece of the worm, just enough to produce some scent and visual appeal to the fish. Above this, he places a round plastic float. The depth of the float will vary with each specific place he fishes, but it will be anywhere from a few inches to 3 or 4 feet deep.

“The key to success on any given day is to not get locked into any specific depth or pattern preference. Don’t assume you know where the fish will be holding. Certainly, if I fish on successive days, I’ll return to the productive technique of the previous day when starting out. But if I haven’t fished in a few days, I’ll quickly start changing different areas and different depths to locate the fish,” Jones noted.