Meet You Halfway Crappie

As much as I like playing the coaxing game and trying to figure out what combination of lifts and twitches will make a fish bite, I like it even better when they are super aggressive, like they were this morning. The crappie did get fussier as the day wore on, but for the first couple of hours, if there were fish on the graph when I began lowering my bait, chances were good that at least one would start coming up before the lure got very far down, and if I just stopped it halfway down, they fish would come all the way up and attack it. It was that simple. No waiting. No coaxing. No rejection. They'd just come up and grab the bait, which is just plain fun.

I had said yesterday that we would be walleye fishing today. Plans shifted a bit, and the walleye day is now tomorrow, but Plan B, which was orchestrated by Jeff Sundin, worked out far better than most people's A plans. I really don't have any idea how many fish we caught -- most of which were released like the one in the clip above. I actually wish I'd kept a rough tally of my own fish, just to know. I only know we caught a bunch. I caught almost all my fish on a Watsit Grub body rigged on Lindy Bug or Toad jighead.

Drop-In Trout

As Nathaniel walked along a  rock wall beside a big plunge pool, he looked down into the swirling eddy on the edge of the pool. He immediately saw trout holding beneath all the floating debris, and the more he peered into  the hole, the more trout he saw. Never one to walk past a waiting fish, Nathaniel slipped a Watsit Grub into a gap in the debris, dropped it almost to the bottom and began jiggling it lightly. Immediately one of the trout attacked, and he set the hook and pulled up the fish.

"That was fun!" he said about the visual game, and then he dropped his grub back down. It wasn't long before he pulled out another trout and his friends came to join him on the wall. I'm not sure how many fish they ended up catching from straight below before the trout got wise, but I know it quite a few and that all three boys had a big time. The biggest challenge was getting the grub between the floating bark and branches and keeping it close to the bottom without the debris catching the line and pulling it back up. If they could work a lure among the trout, the fish would bite, and it was obvious when to set the hook because everything happened in clear sight.

The boys were fishing in a youth-only stream, where I wasn't allowed to fish, so I didn't get to try the game, but the drop-in trout fishing sure was fun to watch.

Tough to Quit

Jeff Sundin was right. It's far better to have to quit fishing when you really don't want to than to endure the end of a day when you are eager to be done. Still, pulling big 'gills from little holes in the ice is just so fun that I had a hard time resolving to reel my jig up once and for all. The sun was sinking, though, and the day's work was done, so I bid the ice, the crappie and the bluegills farewell.

We actually spent the first half of today on a little trout lake. The trout were fairly evasive, but it was
a fun morning outing on a beautiful walk-in lake, and Jon Thelen did manage one really pretty rainbow, which attacked a Lindy Slick Jig/Watsit Grub combination. From Jon's report, it fought like a very angry fish and felt like it was even bigger than it was. I hope to give Minnesota trout lakes another try some time.

Homeward bound tomorrow. Word has it we got a lot of snow at home (Georgia), so I'm hopeful my flight is on time and that the roads from the airport all the way to my house, 90 miles to the north, are cleared by the time I'm ready to get on them.

I look forward to my next ice adventure, whenever that turns out to be. More likely than not, it'll be next season. You never know, though!

76 Fish, but Who is Counting Anyway?

Nathaniel and I are not big fish counters, especially when the bite is good and our focus is simply on having fun catching the fish. However, Asher, my 8-year-old, always wants to know numbers. Therefore, when we saw that the action was going to be fast yesterday afternoon, Nathaniel and I went ahead and started counting, confirming the count aloud with virtually every fish caught. We could have missed it by one or two, but I'm confident that our tally of 76 fish in about three hours was pretty close to accurate. The catch included crappie, bass and bluegills, with some hard-pulling, hefty 'gills in the mix.

The top producing baits were the smallest size of Lindy Watsit Grub, which we fished on ultralight spinning tackle, cast close to the bank and worked slowly with little twitches of the rod tip. However, I also caught several fish on a fly rod, which was rigged with a Sneaky Pete and a Tellico Nymph, and Nathaniel caught several bass on buzzbait.

We only caught three crappie, but all three were somewhat noteworthy. I dropped a tandem-rigged pair of Watsit Grubs beside the pond's spillway, got hit immediately and set the hook into what turned out to be a pair of black crappie.

About 15 minutes later, while I was casting my Watsit Grub for bream and Nathaniel was buzzing for bass, I suddenly heard racket behind me and Nathaniel calling out, "Whoa!" I turned to find him scrambling to grab his ultralight rod, which was about to go out of the boat. It seems his Watsit had been hanging barely in the water, and a seriously aggressive crappie that wasn't the least bit scared of the boat had darted up and grabbed it. He rescued the rod and landed the fish! (Photo below.)

It was one of those fun fishing days where everything just worked, and the result was a big number of fish caught in only a few hours and a big dose of summer fun.

Bluegill Bite the Main Attraction

The fact that Nathaniel and I scored a double to get things started during yesterday's pond outing wasn't so unusual. The odd part was the fact that he caught the bluegill and I caught the bass. Usually, I'm the one who reaches first for the ultralight while he has trouble putting down his bass rod. In truth, I caught my bass on my ultralight, but it our double seemed backward, and Nathaniel really had set down his bass rod and picked up his ultralight.

Nathaniel's bluegill set the tone for our short afternoon outing. His "little pole" was rigged with a tiny Lindy Watsit Grub, and from the time he caught that bream, I'm not sure he put it down, because virtually every time he cast it to the pond's edge, he got hit, and often he would end up hooked up with a good-sized bluegill. In fact it wasn't long before I found myself digging in the box for a Watsit of my own so I could get on the action too. I caught a couple of 'gills on my starter, but he probably caught 10 in the same amount of time.

I also managed to pull a couple of crappie off the pond's spillway structure after I switched to a Watsit; however, the bluegills absolutely were the main attraction. Weather and time dependent, we might slip back out to the same pond this afternoon, and if we do, I'll be you can guess how we'll both be rigged to start the outing!

Dock Corner Pitch

As we passed the edge of little dock, Asher couldn't resist a short pitch to a corner dock support. He placed a Watsit Grub right off the corner, let it drop and immediately set the hook. The resistance looked so solid that I actually thought he had hooked wood at first, but it didnt' take long to see that his deeply bent ultralight rod was pulsing. Asher, who was rigged for bluegills with 6-pound test and a 1/16-ounce grub, was grinning madly as battled to get the bass close enough to the edge of he canoe for for me to lip land it for him. Asher's bass, which probably weighed about 2 pounds, was one of eight fish we caught during our short pond outing, but it was by far the most exciting. Asher's other two fish were bluegills. I caught a handful of peanut bass but no bluegills.

Saturday Evening Forays

The last two Saturday evenings have found the boys and I at a nearby pond for the last hour or two of the day, and I sort of feel like we might find our way there again before today is over. A simple final-hour outing puts a nice cap on a hot Saturday spent mostly at home.

We keep it super simple, carrying only a few rods and very little spare tackle. We make a few casts from the dock, flip Nathaniel's johnboat, slip it in the pond and make one or two laps around the perimeter, fishing until dark.

Both recent evening forays have yielded good action. Two weeks ago we caught all bass, with most of them hitting topwater lures. Last week's trip yielded a mix of bass and bream, with a handful of lures yielding at least one fish. Last week's most productive lure was a Lindy Watsit Grub rigged on little spinner harness.