If you’re like me, you’re focused on backpacking, flyfishing and the upcoming grouse and archery seasons.
But in the meantime, I keep getting sidetracked by the crappie fishing. Normally I hit them hard in April and May and do good up until June in Oregon. But this year, it’s now the middle of August and it keeps getting better and better. In fact, right now I am doing better than ever.
I have a self-inflicted feeling that as an outdoor writer I ought to write about new topics every week, but that might be the only item that I’m focused on during any given season.
For instance, when I start archery elk hunting, I’m going to be hunting non-stop. So for two to four weeks in a row, that’s my mission. You may not want the same topic four weeks in a row, but I may do it at least two because something exciting happens on every hunt.
So I don’t necessarily bounce to a new topic every week. In the outdoors, you focus on what’s in season. So with that being said, I’m going to do one more crappie article — and the way the season is extending, it may become a yearlong topic!
Last Wednesday, I had a bunch of articles to get in. I got caught up, and then I took off for the lake and launched my boat. By 5 a.m., I was fishing. They’ve moved out from their spawning areas so I was fishing out in probably 15 to 30 feet of water.
To catch them, I flipped a jig toward the bank and retrieved it super slow. I slightly lifted my rod tip and then drop it and reel in the slack slowly. You can’t reel in too slow. Usually this time of year they’re not slamming it, but maybe 15 percent of the time.
More than likely what you’ll notice will be the line just slightly tightening as you lift your rod tip. If that happens, give it a slight twitch to set the hook. Don’t jerk it too hard or you’ll pull it away from him. You don’t want to do that. Just slightly twitching allows him to re-hit if he misses. I had one hit four times before connecting.
Here’s another method that really worked. Usually I’ll put a worm on a hook with a small split shot and flip it off the back of the boat. This time I forgot my worms, but I found a bottle of Berkley Crappie Nibble in the platinum Sparkles flavor, so I tried them. I started getting hits and finally just fished with Crappie Nibbles the rest of the evening.
The sun started dropping, so I ran up and slapped up a tent and whipped out dinner. OK, I opened two cans of tamales and then hit the sack.
The next morning I was up before daylight, broke camp and whipped out breakfast. This morning I caught more on my LFTL jigs than on the Crappie Nibbles. It seemed like most of them were hanging 20 feet out from rocky structures. Fishing finally slowed down about noon so I headed in.
Now to end on a strange note. I was out in the middle of nowhere by myself. While cooking breakfast, a guy walked into camp and told me he was from New York and sightseeing in a rental car. He had a flat tire and asked if he could get a ride to town. I told him sure, but I’d be fishing until noon. He said he’d be waiting.
So when I got back, I checked on him. The Enterprise rental didn’t have a spare, only a can of Goop and an air compressor. He’d filled it up but said the Goop was leaking out. It must have sealed because it was now holding air. I told him I wasn’t in a hurry and could follow him slowly to town, which was two hours away.
After an hour of dirt and gravel roads, we made it to a blacktop. A kid had passed us on a motorcycle earlier and was stopped ahead. We pulled over to check the tire and the kid took off his helmet. Turns out it was a young girl. She looked disoriented so I asked her if she was OK. She said, "No, actually I’m not." So I offered to give her a ride to town.
Turns out she had took off from Idaho on dirt roads and ended up lost way back in the boonies in Oregon. We’d seen her back a good ways. Then she stopped at a crossroad, then she turned and followed us, eventually passing us and stopping at the blacktop not knowing which way to go.
Maybe I’ll start a search and rescue operation. Unique ending to a great fishing trip.
Tom Claycomb lives in Idaho and has outdoors columns in newspapers in Alaska, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Colorado and Louisiana. He also writes for various outdoors magazines and teaches outdoors seminars at stores like Cabela’s, Sportsman’s Warehouse and Bass Pro Shop.
