Just Angling for February 4, 1999
By Donald Millus
Football-size Crappie For Superbowl Weekend
The temperature last Friday barely managed to get into the high fifties. A front was coming through, and a rather nasty one at that. But I knew that I would be spending most of the weekend either teaching or entertaining, things that often go hand in hand. With Sunday being the day that Dan Reeves would finally exorcise the "chicken curse" from South Carolina football, my chance for some healthy outdoor recreation would have to come late Friday afternoon, wind, chill, and overcast notwithstanding.
Some fish respond to fair weather, the beautiful spotted sea trout or winter trout being a good example. But those silvery and green and spotted flatfish with delicate lips known as "crappie," don’t seem to be put off their feed by a low pressure front and dropping temperatures. Bass and salt water trout may take time to regroup with the arrival of a front, but crappie seem to work in any weather.
I had carelessly forgot to put an extra sweater or a heavy jacket in my car as I headed for work in the morning, but I did have a fly rod, a spinning rod, and some choice crappie lures. The denim jacket that I Had in the back of the car would have to do for a little fishing before dark.
My favorite pond was rippled by the wind, but I took two fish in a half-dozen casts at one end with a Cotee jig, sixteenth of an ounce in a lead head and light body. The tail was a twister tail in orange and the tender mouthed fish hid solidly. Neither weighed much more than a quarter of a pound.
I tried another spot where two ponds connected and the current was running from the still rising Waccmaw River. Nothing hit on either jig or a white streamer fly. I was regretting not wearing a heavier jacket, no doubt spoiled by the unseasonably warm weather of the early part of the week and, indeed, most of January.
The end of another pond that the river was flooding had produced a half-dozen fish the week before. I tried it and the fish were there, although further from shore than they had been when the weather was warmer. One of the fish was a half pound or so. I tried letting the lure sink further and jigging it back to me rather than just reeling slowly, a favorite technique of crappie anglers.
Something hit that felt more like a bass and as I moved the fish toward the bank, I thought it might indeed be a largemouth bass. As it splashed in the shallows, the spots and color made it clear that this was indeed a crappie, but the largest I had seen in a long time. It was, in fact, the size of a football, the perfect big fish to begin the weekend of Superbowl.
Although fried crappie would make an excellent Friday night repast, I felt the best use of this big mother fish was to send it back to its spawning duties, being fruitful and multiplying for future generations of crappie and fishermen, young and old. I let the big fish go.
Speaking of big fish, "Salt Water Fishing II" by Mark Sosin and George Poveromo, is available for $20. It is a fine survey of salt water fishing and is well illustrated by art and photographs. It is published by Outdoor Associates, Inc. and generously illustrated. ISBN 0-945443-02-1 will help you get it from your favorite bookseller or Amazon.Com