Summer Crappie Tales

Summer crappie often seem to be unfindable. You drift, troll, cast around your favorite waterways for other species and then, once in a while, you catch a crappie. What then? Secret lures? Yes!

Secret Lures for Finicky Fish? Indeed.

Summer crappie are often hiding in plain sight. You know what I mean? We often drift, troll, and cast around our favorite waterways for many species and then, once in a while, we get surprised and we shout to our partner or the day, “Hey look! It’s a crappie!” Then we go on doing what we were doing and never catch another one. But we want to!

Crappie are School Fish

The one crappie that we caught on a lure that was probably not meant to catch crappie is a great signal for just one thing. There are more! That one cooperative fish was the alpha leader in a pack of crappie and he made the first move. Oftentimes, if we switch to a smaller lure, a more usual crappie lure, the fish will often be more than just a little cooperative. They’ll slam your lure.

About Secret Lures

Secret lures are really a misnomer of language-use among anglers. Yes, there are lures that are hot one day or two days, but most of the time, a hot lure that works for only a short while and has a much longer story as to why it worked. The sun angle, the sun-ray deflecting wind riffle on the surface, the water clarity in a certain lake zone, speed of lure, depth of lure, rod action imparted to the lure, all that and much more.

This life-like spin-jig with this little holographic tail made by Blue Fox Lure Company has fooled more crappie in the last few months than any other crappie lure I have ever owned from over the last six decades.

Then once in a while we find a lure that seems to work for all, or at least many, occasions and we have to wonder how and why. It works everywhere and sun angle makes no matter, and all the rest.

My grandson and I were fishing a Florida waterway last winter and at about 45 minutes before sunset, he switched to a new lure he received at Christmas. It was a small spin-jig lure made by Blue Fox Lure Company with a very small spinner blade and a flesh colored tail that has some holographic flash material embedded in the tail, a tail that is very, very flexible.

Lazy Fish Will Slam Convincing Baits

He used a Palomar knot to tie on the lure and on the first cast, wham! He hooked a fish and reeled in a 14 inch crappie. This seemed hard to believe since we had been fishing the water for about an hour and has tried so many different lures without success. He caught 10 more fish in the next 20 minutes before we got called to dinner by his grandma.

We went back the next day during the day and he did the same thing again! Okay, I had to see this lure and study it too. It’s not much different than so many other lures similar to it, but this lure has just the right amount of flash and right amount of life-like wiggle in the tail to convince the unconvincing crappie that it’s time to gobble, not just feed. They slam this lure!

summercrappie3

Lure Action, Flash, Sink-Rate – they Matter

I was not totally convinced though, really, so when I fished a bass tournament in Kentucky Lake this last May. After the tournament and as sunset approached, I headed for the docks and tied one of these lures on. On my first cast, wham! A 13-inch white crappie! Over the next several minutes, I caught several more.

Since I live in New York, what were the chances this one lure would work this way in so many places? I had to find out. So I called my grandson and he agreed to help me with this special lure test –we all need an excuse to get out from cutting the grass when mom and dad have those plans. What are grandpa’s for?

We headed for a small lake with very warm water last week, as it has been a really hot summer in the northeast. We were only shore fishing this time, so we walked softly and worked our way in between reeds growing along shore to get our casts in toward some submerged structure we knew about.

summercrappie4The first cast went out, the lure sank to about 4 feet and my grandson started his slow retrieve. The lure about 10 feet and wham! A short fight and here he comes up the bank with a 14-inch crappie! No way you say, right? He caught 6 more on 10 casts and said with a big smile, “I think this is enough for 10 fish sandwiches that Grammy makes. Can I call her to see if she will cook em up?” Grammy never says no to that question.

Since then, we have used this lure a few more times and caught crappie, perch and bass that were all way too big for such small lure.

The message that seems to be driving through, the message that we learned totally by accident, is that sometimes in summer, winter, fall and spring, downsizing your lure size is not a bad thing!

We normally use large lures and catch larger fish than most folks, but this lure with the unique action and reflection and controllable sink rate, is one of those lures you just put into the “special category.”

Live, Learn, Share

So I’d like to ask all of you out there in crappieland, when you find your next new lure that works so well that it seems the fish cannot resist, please take a few minutes to share your success with a kid. Get him or her started on catching fish like you do and let’s get together to share and discover the outdoors with others through the fun of fishing.

Tight lines.

Wise Women, Fishing Lures, Mother’s Day

By Mike Marsh

I smiled at the memory of my first fishing lure it was a jointed minnow-imitation called a Cisco Kid. A gift from the true anglers in my family, Grandma Marsh and Great Aunt Catherine, the lure had seen musky duty in the Great Lakes and had tooth scars as proof. They offered me the choice of any lure in their tackle boxes when I traveled “Up North” to attend a family funeral and this one looked most like a real minnow, except for a Rudolph-red splotch on its nose.

Arbella Jones came to our house in Climax, North Carolina, every other weekend, and my mother paid her to help with the cleaning while she went shopping in Greensboro. I wasn’t certain what Arbella meant when she hugged me one day and whispered into my ear, “Your momma is awful good to me. Would you like to come fishing with me this afternoon?”

Mom nodded yes when I asked if I could go. I got my pitiful “gear” together and when the appointed time arrived, she drove me to the end of a dirt road, where 11 children sat on old couches on a front porch that showed gray wood through a ghostly pallor of white paint eroded by weather and neglect. Placing my clunky steel tackle box and fiberglass fishing rod beneath an oak tree, I went inside as the crowd of kids hushed their clamoring and whispered behind my back.

There was no television set, no rug covering the cleanly mopped wood floor, no drapes on the windows and not a picture on the wall. I passed a bedroom where Arbella’s husband was half asleep. A cold chill hit me as he glared and asked, “What’s HE doing here.”

I knew right then that a white child had likely never played at his home. Arbella stood between us, whispering something to him until his face cracked a broad smile.

A five-year-old girl licked peanut butter from a spoon and nibbled a sandwich of baloney folded into a slice of bread.

“Have some, Mister Mike?” she asked.

I shook my head, ashamed to deprive the family of a scrap of food. It was my first glimpse of the poverty that flourished nearly in our backyard.

A few seconds later, Arbella swatted the little girl on the behind and chastised her for not offering me supper. When I tried to explain that she had, but I declined, Arbella frowned and I realized I had injured her pride.

The entire family headed to a local lake in a rusted car and pickup truck. Lining the bank, everyone fished with cane poles except Archie Lee. My wound-fiberglass rod was relegated to worm-and-cork fishing because the antique affair was spooled with Dacron line and my rusty reel was incapable of casting the lightweight Cisco Kid.

Archie Lee spotted the lure in the open tackle box and asked if he could try it. Arbella shot him a warning look. Although a man of 22, he cowered, but I nodded permission and he tied the lure to the monofilament line of a spincast rig. He made his way to the tall grass and willows along the low side of the pond.

I stopped fishing and watched as he cast the lure, retrieved it, and carefully cleaned its hooks of algae. At the fifth cast, the water erupted. The biggest fish I had ever seen launched from the water like a Polaris missile, tossing its head from side to side. Foam marked the surface and water boiled at the point where he submerged.   Then the bass erupted from the water again and all the kids dropped their rods, shouting and clapping as their brother battled the fish.

Suddenly, silence. The water stilled. As quickly as the battle was joined it ended.

“You’d better not have lost Mister Mike’s lure,” Arbella said in a voice that could have frozen the humid August air.

Archie Lee was scared to death of snakes, but was even more afraid of his momma. He waded through the algae-covered water, up to his knees, waist, chest, and then his neck. Finally he ducked beneath the water, felt his way to the end of the line and freed the lure from the submerged log where the bass had scraped the aggravating lure from its mouth.

Dripping wet and towering over me, Archie Lee gently bent down, returned the lure to my tackle box and smiled. I caught my first bass with it later that summer, fishing it on a spincast rod like Archie Lee’s that I bought with money earned doing farm labor beside Arbella’s children. I was so excited when the fish struck the lure and jumped seven times, that I dropped the rod in the mud when I grabbed the fish.

That adrenaline rush, while quieted some over the years, still transforms me back into a ten-year-old kid fishing with my Grandmother Marsh, Great Aunt Katherine and Arbella Jones, whenever I catch a big fish on a lure. They were the piscatorial matriarchs of their families.

I am sure there are other anglers as fortunate as I have been, introduced to the wonders and pleasures of fishing by women who loved fishing as much as they loved children with them.

Grandmothers, aunts and family friends, they were all someone’s mother. I wish I could wish them a happy Mother’s Day, but they are all fishing in the Great Beyond.

If your mother, or someone else’s mother, has ever taken you fishing, hug her hard this Mother’s Day, for you are one of the luckiest people.