HARD WIND CRAPPIES

 DuPage Angler Sooner Bass calls and tell me he has gotten on some crappie and thinks that Sunday morning they might be even better. We get up at O'dark Thirty and get to the small lake before the sun had risen. The wind was already blowing hard but we would find out that it was just the beginning.

 When I usually fish crappie in high winds I use a McThill Waggler float that is designed to cut through waves and it works great. I cast up wind and let the float drift parallel from me across the water. I am fishing to cover a large area and it is a deadly set-up. Today was different.

 I started with this rig and quickly scored a beautiful white crappie and a of couple bass. The wind picked up, picked up, and picked up some more. Sooner believed the best bite would occur where the wind was the worst. Unfortunately for me he was right. Wagger floats are very light. They cut through waves but do not cut casting through very heavy wind. Sooner, I noticed was catching 2 to every 1 fish I landed. We saw that he was able to out cast me by 20-30 yards. This was do to the  fact that he had these cheap clip on weighted foam bobbers. Once we figured out this was the key to success, we went for a quick trip to the closest store to buy some. 

When we got back the action was amazing. Crappies fell like scaled dominoes. The wind got even worse. 2 - 3 foot white caps on this small body of water were crashing the shoreline. We needed a break from it and decided to try the opposite shore for a while. We were comfortable, but skunked. Sooo back to the wind tunnel and blasting gusts on the windward side we went. Once there we picked right up again! The action was awesome! We ended up with around 70 crappie, 15 gills, and 7 bass.

 Some of these fish were just gorgeous. I used minnows and he used a tandem rig with a mini mite with a tube jig trailer. The weighted floats saved the day. I am not a fan of fishing into hard wind and prefer to use the wind as a drift of sorts. But in this instance head on was the only answer. From now on I will be ready for hard wind crappies.