Photo by Ron Sinfelt

A little boy squeals with delight when his cork darts under. He snaps his rod upward with the efficiency of a bass pro setting the hook on tournament day. His dad quickly pulls his own offering out of the water and kneels beside his son, who is having as much fun as is humanly possible, with his line stretching out from a deeply bowed rod and racing from side to side.

Eventually the boy gets his fish to the surface, and his father is able to grab the line and swing a whopper bream to him. The man holds up a bluegill that his hand barely wraps around, so he and his boy can admire the thick-bodied fish, and then he unhooks it and slips it onto a stringer with half a dozen others that look just like it.

Twenty yards up the banks, a mother and two children are enjoying similar fun. A couple nearby a pair of boating anglers cast ultralight jigs over a bream bed and pull out hand-sized bream of their own.

They are called public fishing areas (PFAs), but the Georgia Wildlife Resources Division, which owns and operates these eight great fishing destinations, contends that the initials also could stand for "perfect family areas." The PFAs, which hold anywhere from a single medium-sized lake to dozens of small lakes, are intensively managed to provide the best possible fishing and the best possible access for family-friendly outings.

Pond fertilization, targeted stockings, habitat development and fish feeding are just some of the efforts regularly carried out to maximize fishing potential, especially for bluegills, shellcrackers (redear sunfish), channel catfish and largemouth bass. Bluegills and shellcrackers are part of the mix on virtually every pond and lake in the program, and most of the waters offer high-quality populations of both species.

"Picking the best bream fishing lakes is really difficult," said Bert Deener, regional fisheries supervisor for Region IV, which contains four of the eight PFAs. "Most of them offer excellent fishing and access for boat-fishing and bank-fishing anglers alike."

To maximize opportunities for all fishermen, PFAs are managed under special regulations. The areas are open seven days a week, sunup to sundown, although hours are limited on some lakes. Boats may be operated with trolling motors only, unless otherwise posted. Where signs state that outboards may be used, boats must operate at idle speed only.

The combined limit for bluegills, shellcrackers and other sunfish is 15 fish. In addition to a fishing license, anglers need a wildlife management area (WMA) stamp. However, if you possess a Sportsmans License or one-day fishing license, you do not have to have a WMA stamp. Additionally, a WMA stamp is not required to fish at the Rocky Mountain PFA.

During May the bluegills and shellcrackers are typically active and quite shallow. Often they are piled up on beds, creating legitimate opportunities for anglers to "limit out" on bream that average close to a pound. Others are scattered around the banks, holding along grassy edges, beside downed trees and around any other bit of cover they can find.

Anglers who just want to see their bobbers dance can do so virtually anywhere along the banks of most PFA ponds by dangling crickets a couple of feet beneath their corks and casting around any type of shallow cover. Fish that are scattered along the banks come in all sizes.

To specifically target large bream, anglers need to locate beds, usually on flats or in sandy basins, often in the backs of creeks or coves or in the upper ends of lakes. Shellcracker beds, generally speaking, will be a bit deeper than bluegill beds.