Bayou Dorcheat's healthy population of largemouth and spotted bass is susceptible to anglers of both the traditional and fly-fishing persuasions. Photo courtesy of Pete Cooper Jr.

Louisiana's Natural and Scenic Rivers System contains flowing waterways ranging from slow and turbid low-country bayous to brisk and bright upland creeks. Somewhere in between those extremes lies northwestern Louisiana's Bayou Dorcheat -- a jewel in its own right.

It originates in southwestern Arkansas and ends at the Lake Bistineau dam where Loggy Bayou carries its effluent from the lake to the Red River. During most of the year, its current is slow at best, its waters stained with tannin but with very good sub-surface visibility. And it supports fine populations of popular game fish, particularly largemouth and spotted bass.

However, before we get into the catching part of those fish on this lovely waterway, I feel compelled to relate a bit of its history.

Sometime before the 15th century, a "Great Raft" of logs was formed on the Red River, causing it to deepen and its tributaries -- like Dorcheat -- to enlarge. During the 1700s, white settlers arrived, and by the early 1800s, this meandering and comparatively small bayou was supporting a thriving shipping industry.

River-boats made their way from the Red up to points near Minden to pick up cotton that had been grown throughout much of the northern part of the state and shipped there by railroad and also gravel that had been mined nearby, and then returned with their loads downstream to Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

The wrecks of some of those boats are still being discovered during periods of low water and supposedly include a Union gunboat that the Confederates sunk near the bluffs along the east side of what is now Lake Bistineau. By around 1873, the "Great Raft" that had prevented the Red River from being used for river traffic had been removed. Dorcheat then lost its value as an industrial waterway, and some 60 years later, the first dam was constructed on it to prevent extensive spring flooding.

For more in-depth historical data, visit the lake's Web site -- www.lakebistineau.com -- and follow the links to "Lake History."

I first encountered Bayou Dorcheat in the late 1950s on the way to Boy Scout camp on Caney Lake north of Minden, and from the U.S. Route 80 bridge that crosses it at Dixie Inn, the view inspired vivid visions of lunkers holding tightly to the bases of those majestic shoreline cypresses.

I'm sure those daydreams were at least a part of the reason I eventually asked my parents for an 11-foot wooden duckboat in lieu of a class ring for my high school graduation present. For several years thereafter, that dear boat and I passed many delightful days on Dorcheat.

And I caught a bunch of bass there, too!

Those days were usually spent within a half-mile of the Route 80 bridge. I preferred to head upstream, paddling as far as my enthusiasm to fish would allow before I began to drift back downstream, probing the shoreline and mid-channel "structure" with an H&H, Tiny Torpedo or plastic worm.