Crappie Day Turns to Bass Blast

After a very cold one fish day a couple of weeks ago, I needed to settle the score. I decided to take my kayak for crappies. I arrive to a lake of glass and just a hint of mist on the water. The air even this early is twice as warm as the last trip. I took the first hour just to paddle around looking for structure, memorizing depths, and searching for a school of crappie. Next to a large flat of 5 feet the bottom sloped to 7.5 feet and there were the fish. There was nothing from 5ft down and the bottom was void of life 9 feet and deeper.

The crappie bite started and man was I relieved. I was starting to doubt my decision to hit the crappie instead of going to LaSalle for hybrids and cats.

The bite was not as fast as I would have liked. My old friend Steven Murray of Tarpon Headquarters use to bring a container of crawlers every time we went fishing even on our most hardcore artificial largemouth bass days. This drove me crazy. UNTIL those crawlers saved our asses on more then one occasion. I learned my lesson and always have crawlers in my bait fridge.

I rigged a spinning rod with a raven float, raven shot, and a raven #4 specialist hook. I set it 4 feet down and baited with a ½ crawler hooked in the nose. To be honest I was searching for bonus hand size gills when the onslaught started. BAM! BAM! BAM! The bass came one after another. They totaled 15 fish with 3 of them over 15 inches!! It was a blast. 

I managed to scrape up about 9 crappies as well on minnows, waxies, and tube jigs. One big white measured out at 13 inches. The funny part I only caught one gill all day and it was not even on the crawlers.

The lesson here is to have a back up plan such as crawlers. Don’t be a stuck up idiot and look down on bait or certain lures. The truth is if your eyes are closed, you just cannot see. Don’t miss out on a great day, please keep an open mind and expect to learn from old, young, expert, and new fisherman. In this case going old school gave me the edge to achieve a great day and a wonderful angling adventure.