I had been out crappie fishing three times this year. I hadn’t done any good but I knew that it’d bust loose any day.
My hotspot is a 15- to 20-minute boat ride from the dock and I usually throw a Rattlin’ Trap and troll over. I usually pick up one, maybe two, on the way over. This time about two-thirds of the way over I got a crappie. I’d just written a crappie fishing article for Fur-Fish & Game Magazine and in the article I advised that it doesn’t hurt to troll to find them. If you get one, stop and jig there. Crappie are a schooling fish so if you catch one, hit that spot. You’re almost guaranteed to catch more.
Well, I’d just written the article so I thought I’d better follow my own advice. I whipped the boat around and drug back over where I’d picked that one up at. Whammo, another one. I whipped around and had another hit.
OK, I’m slow but I can take a hint. I threw out the anchor and grabbed a rod. I had a red/white tube jig tied on two rods, and even though it isn’t my go-to color, since they were already tied on, I flipped one out. Right away I started catching them hot and heavy.
I was still a few hundred yards from my hotspot. It is usually really good but why move? I was catching them non-stop. You could not have handled two rods. I bet I sat for two hours within a 50-foot area.
It didn’t seem to matter if the plastic was properly positioned or not. After a while, the jig was getting really torn up. Finally, it met its demise so I looked in my tackle box. Oh no, no more red/white jigs. Oh well, as good as they were hitting, some other color should work fine. Nope. Red/white was the color today. I was only getting 25 percent as many hits on a pink/white.
Well, I still had one red/white jig left. Pretty soon, it was torn to shreds, too. I put on a yellow/red tube jig and carried on. I did hang one good fighter but it turned out to be a 20-inch sucker.
They definitely weren’t spawning yet. They were out about 20 feet from the bank. The big ones were out 20 feet and the smaller ones were out 30 feet. I threw back 28 and most of them were caught out deeper, so fish a little closer to the bank for the big ones.
Speaking of big ones. Probably two-thirds were 9 1/2 to 10 1/2 inches. There are some good crappies this year. Well, my cooler could hold no more. It was flat full. What a day. I’d caught 176 crappie, one bass, one catfish and one sucker in 5 3/4 hours. Luckily I had grabbed a Mister Twister electric fillet knife but it still took me a few hours.
I had barely filleted the last fish and my daughter told me she was done with school. It didn’t take long and Kolby was hauling in fish hand over fist. She got the knack of it pretty fast and was catching some nice ones up to 11 inches.
She’d flip out her jig and slowly lift the rod-tip and then slowly reel up the slack. Many times, this movement would entice a hit. On this trip, we caught a lot of fish almost trolling with a jig.
It was a perfect day. Sunny, minimal wind and I had my daughter with me and we were catching fish non-stop.
I’d packed some good snacks so we had a ball. We had caught our fair share of fish so after 6 1/2 hours we headed back to the boat dock. Wow, 213 crappie. This had been the best fishing day of my life. You better get out!
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.
