According to Blakely, the entire month of May is great for bream fishing, but superb fishing will be found in June as well.

Blakely is a full-time guide on Reelfoot and can probably show you more about bream in a day than you can learn on your own in an entire week. You can book Billy Blakely for a day of fishing, and arrange lodging if needed, through Blue Bank Resort in Samburg at (731) 253-7878. Blue Bank Resort also has a restaurant, bait and tackle, boat rental, and according to Blakely, everything you’ll need for a successful fishing trip to Reelfoot Lake.

Another outstanding bream hotspot is Kentucky Lake. There are many similarities in this lake with Chickamauga; they’re both on the Tennessee River for one. I’ve fished Kentucky Lake many times for bream and the same kind of productive places that Greg Jones seeks out on Chickamauga are found here, too. His jig and night crawler rig should work great here, too, but I know the live bait offerings of crickets or worms will produce long strings of big bream.

One of my favorite places is the area to the northern end of the lake where the Big Sandy River enters the Tennessee River. You have both those rivers, plus Eagle Creek, another large tributary, all offering a great diversity of shallow-water fishing opportunities for May bream fishing.

Another key factor is that even with a good bit of rain, you can often find good fishable water in one of these three places. Even if one or the other waterways is muddy or not in prime condition, odds are one of the others will be. In addition, there are numerous other smaller creeks with countless coves and pockets that will harbor plenty of bream. The shallow-water action is typically great throughout the month and well in June as a rule.

Old Hickory Lake is a good bet for mid-state fishermen looking for plenty of action as well as decent-sized fish. Overall, the size of the fish here are not as big as Chickamauga or Reelfoot bream, but the springtime fishing will produce some good average-sized fish. Most important, the lake will produce plenty of fish, making it an excellent place for a family outing or a great place to take youngsters who are more into catching loads of fish.

Another big plus for this lake, in addition to its location near Nashville, is the numerous Corps of Engineers access areas around the lake. During this time of the year, plenty of outstanding bream fishing can be enjoyed from the shoreline in these areas. Granted, a boat will enable you to have more opportunity to seek out the fish. But walking the shoreline on many of these areas will be enough for you to get into some excellent bream action throughout the month.

One hotbed of bream activity is the mid-area of the lake around the Cedar, Spencer and Station Camp creeks area. There are numerous access areas in these creeks and they are close enough so they can all be fished by boat. In addition, the public areas will enable anglers to fish effectively from the shoreline as well.