Sam

I'm not a bass fisherman, I'm usually looking for more tasty critters like crappie. I've got a question, though. Why do so many bass fishermen use baitcaster rigs to throw lures like Wiggle Warts (or any "plugs"), spinnerbaits, top-water lures, and such? I fish for bass occasionally and I like baitcaster outfits for lures worked slow along the bottom - Carolina and Texas rigged soft baits, jigs, football jigs, etc. For lures that get retrieved faster, though, and for which there's a lot of casting, I like spinning tackle. Is there any advantage at all to using baitcaster rigs for those? I've gotta say, though, it's a pleasure to watch good bass fishermen at work with those baitcasters. I still get backlashes sometimes.

Bill, thanks for posting this - that's giving us an unexpected fresh crappie supper this evening! Pretty good for December. As Madeliene Kahn famously said in "Blazing Saddles", "It's Twue, It's Twue!" A helpful hint: I wasted half the trip looking for 'em - they're holding tight on flooded trees in DEEP water, 30 to 40 feet. That was hard for me to fish with a lead head jig and swimmin' minnow, but I managed. Live minners and a slip bobber would have been better. Water temp 50, all black crappie.

Yep, and I appreciate the way the "leftovers" sometimes give us other-than-bass fishermen a clue as to what's going on. Lots of times at the beginning of a trip I've looked in the edge of the water near a launch ramp and seen that somebody cleaned a bunch of crappie (or white bass, walleyes, catfish, whatever). That's good information, there - better than fish stories!

Hehe. You've got a suspicious mind. I guess I do too, because after I moved I watched that bank I'd left and they didn't come back to fish it. Also, the crappie were where they said they were - big 'uns.

Tournament or recreational fishermen, we all need to get along and treat each other right. I don't fish tournaments, but I have absolutely no problem with those who do. A couple of years ago I was crappie fishing on Tablerock and I had a couple of orange markers out along a bank, slow-trolling swimmin' minnows in between. One of the big bass tournaments was going on and I was watching the glitter boats run and catching some wakes, but nothing close enough to bother. Then two fishermen in a tournament boat running down the lake saw me and turned in toward the bank for a word. They were some serious bass fisherman, a real fancy Illinois boat with product logos and all that. "Are you crappie fishing?" "Yessir." "Well, we just left the line of trees by that point over there (points up the lake and across to the other side) and the slab crappie wouldn't leave our lures alone. I wish we could fish for them, but we're in a bass tournament." "Hey, thanks! Good luck in your tournament." "Thanks. Have fun!" And off they went. I went across to where they told me, and I caught a limit of slabs pretty quick. With the money they had invested and the level of competition they were in, I think it was real nice of those guys to take time during a tournament to tell me.

Years ago I set two 8' lengths of well-drilling pipe upright, in concrete, in the yard beside our garage. Between those posts I built a 8' x 3' fish cleaning table with running water, a double stainless steel sink, a hose with a spray nozzle for clean-up, overhead floodlights, plug-ins for electric knives on each side, and a metal chute leading to a hanging gut-bucket. I have a 10' x 10' compost bin I turn with a tractor and the fish guts get composted along with leaves and green stuff and added to the soil in my vegetable garden. Tip: Don't let the grandkids go barefoot in the garden because catfish spikes don't rot down! I'm kinda serious about fishing for supper.

So you guys would call the law, the government, on somebody for that? I've got a big problem with fish and game hogs and if I saw that happening I wouldn't stand for it. I've got a bigger problem with calling the government in to make "revenues" and fund their bureaucracy every time such a deal happens. That's an old-fashioned attitude I guess, but it's the same one my grandpa had and it's the way folks used to think in the Ozarks. I still do - just sayin'.

P.D., when trolling a deep-running plug, the way I know I've got a walleye on is that it feels like the lure got stuck in the mud. Yep, just soft mud. I'll shut the motor down, keep tension on the line, and then maybe feel a little wiggle on the rod tip. "Hey, I'm not hung up - that's a FISH." On the way in a walleye puts up a good fight, then close to the boat they get downright resentful. It ends up with a real beside-the-boat rodeo because you sure can't "lip" a walleye. Pointy teeth, gill-cover fangs, and a plug with two treble hooks all tangled up in a net and attached to a long, strong, thrashing fish end up in the bottom of my boat and it takes a while to get things straightened out and get back to fishing. I'm not complaining one bit about the way walleyes fight.

Bill - thanks for the report! Looking for some entertainment and to expand beyond my crappie-fishing ways, I'm going to order some of those Real Image spoons. I've got some questions, though: What size spoons are you using? They come in 1/2, 1, 1 1/2, and 2 oz. From your picture at top showing one of the spoons, your hand, and a nice smallmouth, I'm guessing it's one ounce, maybe? I don't understand about dressing the spoons with an Owner Roostertail or a Death Trap, though. The white tail on one of your spoons looks like the tail of a Roostertail alright, but where does that come from? Are you changing out the treble hook to one called a Death Trap? Let me know, please - I'm a poor old crappie fisherman and don't know about that stuff. What kind, and weight, line do you use when spooning? Last few years I've used 10 lb. PowerPro braid every chance I get, but I can switch to mono or whatever if the braid is too visible for this. THANKS FOR YOUR HELP, I seldom post here but I sure appreciate your reports!

Naaah, I think we can get along and use markers to help each other out better than that. Marking something doesn't mean you're claiming exclusive rights to fish it - unless you stay right by your marker. I had one good crappie trip this April where about five boats cooperated, using markers, to get a bunch of limits of crappie. In that first big cove below Bridgeport on TR, the pattern was that crappie were staging out in the middle of the cove, on submerged stick-ups, in 35 feet of water. It was windy and the bite wasn't fast enough to try and stay on one stick-up. About the only way to fish it was to slow-troll swimming minnows, with the wind, right down the middle of the cove and drag past as many stick-ups as you could find, none of which could be seen. Miss the brush as you went by, even by a few feet, and you'd miss the fish. I carry three orange markers and while trolling this way I soon had three big stick-ups marked. That gave me about a 200 yard long line to keep going down, but there were other "undiscovered" stick-ups out there. As we passed other boats that were fishing the same way, I told them what I was doing and asked them to mark any other brush if they could. Before long there were about five boats working the same line down the middle of the cove, and about nine markers out! We were all motoring upwind then drifting and trolling downwind, using all those markers as guides and pulling crappie out of the brush! We all had a good time using each others markers and helping each other out. No problems.

Thanks for the good information, everybody. I pulled the "bad" battery this morning and took it to the auto parts store where I get Delco Voyager marine batteries. I figured I'd replace it with a cranking battery in the same Delco series. They tested the battery and it was fine - both for voltage and cranking power, so I don't know what's going on with that depthfinder turning itself off when I start the main motor. Maybe it's more of a depthfinder issue. It's a Humminbird 597, and it doesn't exactly turn itself "off" when the motor is started. Usually it goes into some super-faint mode where you can hardly see the screen but it is still sort of "on". None of the buttons work when it's in that condition, and the only cure is to remove the depthfinder fron the console, re-attach it, then press buttons to turn it on. Does anyone have any ideas about that? I'm charging both batteries up, going fishing tomorrow. Since the batteries are identical I'm switching them - maybe that will make a difference.

Two questions. The most pressing one is that I've got to buy a boat battery tomorrow and I'm sure I've been getting the wrong kind. On the recommendation of a friend, I've always run Delco Voyager boat batteries. Those are deep-charge marine batteries and one of them does a good job running my 12-volt Minn-Kota 40-lb. trolling motor. Trouble is, I use a second Delco Voyager to start my outboard motor, a 4-stroke 50 hp Suzuki, and run the Humminbird 597ci depthfinder on my console. The starting battery for my outboard motor has a dead cell and I need to replace it before going fishing on Tuesday. From what I've read here, I don't think I should be running a deep-charge marine battery for that - and I know they only last me about 50 trips, probably because I'm using the wrong kind of battery. I need a quick recommendation of what battery to get for that, please! Second, and less pressing, question. Obviously, I've got my boat wired up bass-ackwards. My strongest Delco Voyager battery runs my 12-volt trolling motor and the Eagle FishMark 320 depthfinder on the trolling motor. I ran the front depthfinder off that battery because the wire was already up front for the trolling motor, but toward the end of a long trip that depthfinder dims and blinks out with use of the trolling motor. I bet both depthfinders should be hooked up to the battery that starts the outboard motor, huh? Now that I think about it, I've got (useless) power-trim buttons up front for the main motor, and they work. What's the good of that, anyway? Maybe if your motor gets hung up on a stump and you don't want to go back to the console to tilt it up? Anyway, I bet that control is run by the main, starting battery so the wires are already up there - and it should be easy to power the front depthfinder from that. Bottom line - I'm running two deep-charge marine batteries, one of which starts the main motor and runs the depthfinder on my console. The other marine battery runs my trolling motor and the depthfinder up front. How should I change that - and especially, what battery should I buy right now for starting the main motor? THANKS!

Now I've got to make a decision. I don't fish for bass much and I don't keep bass when I catch them, but I DO like to fish the post-spawn on Tablerock. When it's time for Senkos, grubs, and crankbaits I can usually get in a few spring trips and have fun catching bass - and it sounds like it's that time. On the other hand, I think I could go over to Bull Shoals again this week, have the lake pretty much to myself, and catch another limit of crappie. A lot of boat traffic does bother me, and I hate to hear that's going on right now. Champ188, you said in a few more days the derby swarm will be gone - I don't know the schedules, when is that gonna be? I go fishing to relax, not to aggravate myself.

We didn't go out of K Dock all last year because of high water, so my partner and I tried it yesterday (Wednesday). We drove through Forsyth, and when we crossed the highway bridge just below River Run and the mouth of Swan, we noticed a big current was running. Not figuring out what that meant, we launched at K Dock and couldn't get a bite on any of the usual crappie spawning and staging areas around there. Water temp was 56. So, like a couple of dummies we headed UPSTREAM around Snapp Holler where the water temp was 53 and we also coudn't get a bite in any of our usual good springtime spots. Well, we've been crappie fishing the James River arm of Tablerock lately and seeing water temps as high as 71. It finally dawned on us - THEY'RE LETTING COLD WATER OUT OF TANEYCOMO and that's shocked the fish. So, we headed downstream. As we went, we could see the water temp get warmer a degree at a time until it hit 66-67 around Yokum. In that general area of the lake we found crappie wherever we went but had to work for them. They're not up shallow yet, but they're not real deep - we found them everywhere there was flooded timber in 15-20 feet of water, holding tight to the brush. They were all black crappie and when we cleaned them we found they were all males. I think they're still in a pre-spawn pattern and the males are staging on banks that have brush near nesting areas. The females are probably still out in the deep channels, we didn't find any of them. I think crappie will come up to the banks in the next week or two from about Mincy on down - but that might not happen at all this year upstream if cold water keeps flowing into Bull Shoals.

I usually catch two or three yellow perch a year out of upper B.S. while fishing for crappie or walleyes. I've never caught even two in one day, so though they may run in schools I sure wouldn't know how to catch a bunch of them. Also, the ones I've caught are small, only six inches or so. I did catch an eleven inch yellow perch last year and I kept it to see if they really taste as good as I've heard. They're real good, all right - just like a little walleye. I keep hoping the yellow perch fishery there will improve to the point that they can be targeted on purpose. They're a good fish, and I'd love to be able to catch a bunch of them.

Dirty water only causes crappie to build their nests more shallow, it won't delay their spawning. Of course, if they nest in very shallow water because the water's muddy, and if the lake level is dropping like this year, that could be bad. Some of the best spring crappie trips I've ever had have been on Stockton with the water high and yellow-muddy. Nests were up in the cow pastures in ONE FOOT of water and every place a bush was sticking up there was a slab crappie. I tilted the outboard motor up out of the water and took my boat through wire fences a couple of times to get to 'em.

I'm going to stick my neck out here and say the crappie spawn (at least on the James River Arm) is nowhere near being over. I've gone out of Bridgeport three times in the past week, and I'm still finding the best crappie on brush in very deep water, in staging areas near coves and spawning banks. The females are full of eggs that are far from ready. Water temps are in the high 60's and as high as 71, and that's making it a very strange year this early on the calendar, for both crappie and white bass. I THINK that length of daylight triggers the spawn even more than temperature, and I THINK the peak of 'em coming up to the banks is still a week or two away. It may be that the warm temps will cause an extended spawning period, with a few crappie coming up shallow all month long instead of them doing it all at once.

I haven't gone yet, but it's the same every year. I start fishing in March and start catching in April. That's for white bass and crappie both - and I really think the length of daylight gets them going more than water temp, weather, or any other factor in the spring.

I'm not surprised that little finesse baits do good on bass, because I often catch bass when crappie fishing with small lures. My best fish last season was a 21 1/2" largemouth caught on a swimming minnow and 1/16 oz. jighead out of brush in the Long Creek arm. Fortunately, the fish headed for open water and I was able to chase it with the trolling motor, because I had an ultralight pole and 6 lb. mono line. I lose more bass than I catch when I'm crappie fishing because I've got to assume a bite is a crappie and I usually don't set the hook hard enough to stick a bass. Even if light crappie poles would allow it, a "bass" hookset would bring up crappie lips, mostly. Still, I get a good bass in (and release it) once in awhile - and in my experience, bass of all sizes often bite small lures.

I run a four-stroke outboard, so no longer have to mix oil in the gas. I found, though, that one fill-up with poor-quality or low octane gas can cause the problems you describe. That happened to me last year, and I ended up draining and refilling the gas tank. Now I only use premium grade gas with NO ethanol from a local station I trust, and I've had no further trouble.

Not really, but it's a funny idea. Sometimes a little self-help is called for. I once built and operated a carwash business. When it came to planting the landscape trees around it, I chose MULBERRIES. Not fruitless mulberries, but the kind that have red berries the birds love and splatter on every parked car in the neighborhood.

From a different viewpoint, in my experience the new brushpiles have generally made crappie fishing more difficult also. Crappie are bullies, and when they're on a brushpile the bigger fish always hog the best cover. The "slabs" go to the thickest, most impenetrable part of the cover, and they drive the dinks to the outer edges. That's not a problem with Tablerock's normal crappie areas, which tend to be stump fields with scattered stick-ups and flooded cedars that we can cast to and slow-troll around with jigs. In these new, thick brushpiles the "slabs" have such good cover we can't get to them. We're catching short crappie and keepers that just barely make 10" off the tops and around the edges of those piles, with NO 13"+ crappie at all. I'm sure the big ones are in there, in the middle. Slip-bobbers and minnows fished just over the tops of the heavy cover might work better, but I'm not much of a minnow fisherman.

My partner and I went out of Bridgeport last week and brought 17 crappie home. We threw about that many short ones back and no big crappie were caught. Nothing over 12".

Vigorous? From what I've been reading around here, the bass bite has been far from vigorous. I hope the bass fishing does improve soon. If it doesn't, I'm afraid I'll soon start finding $25,000 glitter-boats parked in all my crappie holes - tied up to a snag, beach umbrella in place, Patsy Cline CD playing, a bunch of slip-bobbers out, drowning minnows, one guy asleep on the deck using his bass-patches vest for a pillow........

Martin, like you, I'm not going to look up the exact regulation. I'm pretty sure, though, that Missouri law specifies a maximum of "three hooks per pole" with any hooks that are attached to one artificial lure considered to be just one hook. If that's right, then the legality of the Alabama Rig would depend on whether the whole thing is ONE LURE or a bunch of 'em, and I surely don't know. I guess the MDC would have to decide that, backed up by somebody in a black robe.