It’s mid-December as I write this, and I’ve just spent a fantastic 60-degree day on Lake Ouachita, my home lake, with Jeremiah Kindy. Jeremiah won the Lake Ouachita Bassmaster Open in 2024 and fished the 2025 Classic. We were fun fishing for stripers to stay in tune with the different species of fish that thrive in this beautiful mountain lake.
We’ve both done a little guiding over the past few years and decided to team up and create a guide service on Ouachita. We’ll announce an official name for the enterprise soon on Instagram and Facebook under Beau Browning Fishing and Jeremiah Kindy Fishing.
We both need something to keep us busy during the offseason and to bolster our bank accounts. And we love to see a kid or someone who doesn’t fish often get their line stretched. It makes great memories for our clients and for us as well.
Besides the enjoyment and the income, guiding will help us stay sharp with our boat control, electronics and casting ability. Pro golfers swing their clubs every day. It only makes sense that pro anglers should never go long without picking up a fishing rod.
Our service will cater to anglers who wish to cast for stripers, largemouth bass, spotted bass, walleye, bream and crappie. We want our clients to take full advantage of whatever is biting the best on Ouachita at any given time.
I’m convinced that being well-versed with a variety of species will make us better bass tournament anglers. When you figure out how different species relate to a given ecosystem, it helps you understand why and when bass and baitfish do what they do.
For instance, when you find yellow bass feeding on shad, there’s a good chance that big largemouth are close behind them.
Winter is a great time to catch stripers, largemouth, spotted bass and walleye at Ouachita. Most of the stripers run 10- to 20-pounds, but it’s not unusual to boat a 25- to 30-pounder on any given day.
We catch stripers mainly on jigging spoons and 3.5- to 5-inch swimbaits. Swimbaits work best when you find a group of stripers because they’ll fight over your bait. Today, we also caught them 35 to 40 feet deep on jigging spoons and Rapala jigging baits.
Along with the stripers, we also caught largemouth, spotted bass and yellow bass.
Jeremiah and I know how to catch all the sportfish living in Ouachita, but the goal is to teach our clients how to have fish tugging on their line. When we make that happen, the satisfaction is immense.
There have also been times I’ve learned something while guiding that helped me during a bass tournament. I once had a 15-year-old client who wanted to learn how to fish an Alabama rig. I rarely employ the Alabama rig because it isn’t allowed in Bassmaster tournaments.
I decided to target brushpiles. The day was cold and heavily overcast. I was surprised to find that the Alabama rig tempted more bites when retrieved just outside of the brushpiles than it did coming directly over them.
I envisioned the low light had the bass roaming around near the brushpiles rather than holding tight to them. I remembered that when I later fished a few tournaments under similar conditions. I picked off my bass retrieving a football jig 20 to 30 feet away from the brushpiles I had found.
