Lake Conroe Crappie Fishing School 2/7/2013
I got an invitation to join Slabsticker and his best buddy, John for a hands-on crappie class out on Lake Conroe today. Wow was that a learning experience! I have always struggled to catch deep water crappie. That's why the spawning season is such a great treat for me. The darn things come in shallow and I can finally get to them. Well Slabsticker and John were such gracious hosts, they blindfolded me, spun me around in a dozen circles and sat me down on the floor of the boat for a pre-dawn, high-speed boat ride somewhere out on Lake Conroe. Once we anchored-up, they broke out the Contracts of Confidentiality, a pen and a sharp knife to draw blood.
When the legal proceedings were squared-away and they were confident I'd never again fish in these exact GPS co-ordinances, we commenced to tying on some really cool top secret Guantanamo Bay Super Deluxe Hand-Tied Crappie Jigs From ****. We dropped them down some seventy feet on brush piles put in place back in the sixties by the Secret Service. President Nixon used to fish the place way back in the day!
We got on location around 6 AM and fished without a bite until 7:30. I think that's what time the crappie set their alarms to because as soon as one bit, it was on! Now Joey’s buddy, this John fella, is a six-foot three-inch, three hundred pound smack talking Pasadena boy and so him catching more fish than Joey and I made for some real Texas Braggadocios Rambling that went on most of the day-it was a blast! He’d all of a sudden just start counting his fish and asking you over and over, “how many did you catch again?”
True to form the crappie tested my patience. Joey would tell us he just knew they were down there and that they just weren’t biting. That’s when I’d get bored and restless. This is usually the time when I’d pull anchor, crack open a beer and go boat riding-first lesson learned today. Just stay-put and wait them out! About an hour after we’d box a bunch of nice, big slabs, they’d attack again in groups of six or eight and then all the action would just stop. Joey and John have the patience of Jobe as they would just keep fishing and waiting. These two can sit in absolute silence, the whole time fully engaged in the art of pendulum jigging and never stray from their task! Meanwhile, I would slowly begin to lose my mind, caught in the grip of near manic depression as I would stare off in the distance wondering what I was missing on the opposite side of the lake! And then, once again, BAMM as if someone bumped their butts with a cattle prod, the crappie would begin this savage attack, killing all things jig-like! We’d put a bunch more in the cooler and then-silence! This went on until 12:30 and we called-it a day. We must have caught fifty crappie, many of them just a little too small for the fillet knife, but we brought home sixteen really big girls for the family dinner table-a cold beer to be poured out of respect for their sacrifice-of course!
We finished the day at a Chinese buffet in Conroe called the Hibachi. Us three fat boys really put a hurt on their groceries-big time! Once again it was a great day to live in Texas-no place else I’d rather be!
Things I learned at crappie school today;
Use a ultra-light rod & reel combo-not to feel the fish, but to feel the jig.
Wait-out the crappie-they bite in cycles.
Pendulum the jig, wiggle it and sometimes just don't fricken move it at all!
If you get a chance to go out on Joey's cadilac pontoon boat-run don't walk! it's like fishing from a floating dance floor and had all the bells and whistles-awesome!
Use High-Vis Stren or Mr Crappie fishing line so you can see what your jig is doing.
The sycle hooks on these custom jigs are fantastic at holding on to the ol' paper-mouth crappie.
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