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I came up to the lake on Memorial Day. We had a heavy rain Saturday, with
lightening and I did not go out. By the time the rained stopped I knew that
the ground would still be muddy and that it would be hard to get into any
ponds.
I knew the crappie would be in on the lake as we have been hitting them
fairly hard the last few weeks. I got to the lake at 5:30 in the morning.
One other fisherman was casting for bass. I walked out on the jetty and cast
the first rod that I picked up from the two I had with me. I had a
perch-a-bou fly (see Ricks favorite crappie flies in the panfish archives)
on the tippet and the crappie hit it just after it went into the water. It
was one of the cookie cutter crappie in this lake, but they are still fun to
catch.
The fly was so popular with the fish that I caught a fish on the next 26
casts. I would have had more, but the next fish was barely lip hooked and
got off when I tried to swing it out of the water. All in all you can make a
fortune in any professional sport with that high of a percentage of success.
I caught several more in a row after that one flipped off. It was just cast
and set the hook. There has to be an incredible number of fish in this lake.
I had a good number of fish when a family with a couple of small kids showed
up at the jetty. I decided that it was time to move and go along the road to
fish the rip-rap. That is easier than trying to keep track of where the kids
are all the time.
The fish were hitting the same way along the road. This is the same place
that Joe Hyde did his triple digit day a few weeks ago. I picked up a few
nice sized gills as I went along this rip-rap. Most of the crappie I was
catching were within about three feet of the shore. There was a fish about
every foot or so along the shore and getting a fly near them resulted in a
strike.
I had my fish basket as full as I wanted to have as I knew they had to be
filleted. That is one thing that I always remember to think about, but don't
always pay attention to. I was just getting ready to leave when one of the
old geezers showed up.
He told me that he had a couple of folks that would like to have fish fries
and he had said that he would try to get the fish to do it. I started
tossing the fish I caught into his bucket. I had put several in his bucket
when he decided that he had enough to clean.
He called me this week and said that he had 95 fish in his bucket. I
filleted 148 of them when I got home. I took fish to several families on
Tuesday night. This is the time of the year that I want to make sure that
the fillets are cold before I go out to deliver them. That way I don't have
to worry about them going bad in the heat.
This was a fun morning to just catch fish. I left the pond and was headed
home at 7:45 am. I had the fish done by 10:30 and in the refrigerator to
cool off.
Hope you can get out on the water and have a great day like this.
~
Rick
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