Kansas spring crappie are biting!
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| Modern Wild Man's great stringer of Kansas Crappie! |
The crappie bite is on in Kansas, and for me it's a great time of year! The cold frost of the midwestern winter is on it's way out across the plains. Hours of daylight grow longer with each passing day, and spring is just around the corner. The last few weeks I have seen northern flights of ducks, the drakes are in their splendid full spring plumage painted with bright colors and vivid detail. Large groups of spring migrating robins have been in my yard lately, and on their wings are the first breathes of springtime. The redwing blackbird sang in the thrushes just last Sunday as I was fishing, a sure sign that lilacs will be blooming soon and winter is losing its grip.
The last couple of weeks here on the plains have been mixed with days of spring and winter struggling for the upper hand. One morning will feel damp and warm with the musty smell of springtime dew. Some daytime highs have reached into the upper sixties and lower seventies only to be followed by a frosty night and gusty north winds with highs struggling to make forty degrees. That's how it is in the midwest. I've heard it said, "If you don't like the weather in Kansas, stick around, it will change." The weather begun to warm into what I like to think of as "leave your jacket at work weather". You know the days when you need a jacket in the morning, but you shake it off in the afternoon because it's too warm and you forget it at work only to miss it the next morning when it's chilly again. This kind of weather is sure to mean a few things. Spring turkey season is just around the corner, the morel mushrooms will be popping up soon, and you had better go try and catch a crappie.
Crappie fishing is a tradition for anglers from Minnesota to Texas. Folks fish for "croppy", "crappy", and "white perch" all around the country and no matter how you say it, it is a lot of fun. Crappie fishing can be done in any number of ways, and I'm not certain that one is much better than another. Some folks fish for crappie year round, others only fish for them seasonally. I've caught crappie on purpose and on accident, and you can bet I'm always excited to get one on the end of the line. Crappie can be finicky and aggressive, sometimes both at the same time. One thing I know for sure about a stringer of cold water caught crappie, is that they are some mighty fine eating!
There are about as many different ways to fish for crappie as there are ways to say crappie. Many old time crappie fisherman use minnows. A lively two to four inch minnow rigged through the lips on an aberdeen hook with a couple split shot under a slip rigged bobber has caught many a crappie. Some folks are died in the wool jig fishermen, dipping rubber jig bodies of all colors of the rainbow into watery depths around brush piles and rocky ledges. Still some folks like to use both. A rig made up of a minnow tied below a jig, all under a bobber can be a mighty effective tool to get a crappie to bite. I find myself to be in the jigging category of crappie fishermen. It's not that I don't like to use minnows, or that I think jigs catch more fish, or even that I think live bait fishermen are any less of fishermen than the folks who use artificials. The fact is I don't have time for live bait. Using minnows requires a whole nother level of preparation and planning before jumping in the pickup and heading to the lake. There is no bait shop in the nearest town to me, and with so many laws to avoid the transfer of hitchiker aquatic species, I opt to throw jigs when I fish for crappie. Besides, trying to keep a dozen minnows alive has always seemed like some sort of sorcery or magic to me.
Just last Sunday afternoon, little wild man and I made time to enjoy a little crappie fishing from a small boat. We packed a few drinks and some goose jerky in a cooler. I pushed the nose of our little pond hopper Coleman Crawdad boat into the bed of the pickup, threw in a trolling motor and battery and off we went with a tackle box full of lead head jigs and little rubber tubes. We made a short drive to a little lake we knew held crappie and motored out listening to the hum of a little electric motor pushing us out onto the lake. Fishing between two people can be so much more than fishing. We talked about things that mattered and things that don't. We bet each other who would catch the first fish, and then the fish after that, and the fish after that. A young man in a little boat with a fishing rod is a kind of magic I think; warm Sunday afternoons in springtime are made for this.
It didn't take long and we began to hook up with crappie. I've got a little portable fish finder that runs off the trolling motor battery, and I've got to say it has made a big difference in our ability to put fish in the boat. Quickly we got into fish, and then just as quickly we were out. When crappie quit biting the first thing you do is change the color of your jig, then the size of the jig head, then maybe how deep your fishing. We motored around a little, scanning the lake channel for structure, and as soon as we found some, we found more crappie. We decided on a little yellow jig head with a sparkly little translucent two inch rubber body. We caught crappie all afternoon. The fish over ten inches long went on a stringer and anything under went back in the water. We talked about conservation, about the upcoming spawn and the fish we want to catch next year and the year after that. A boy and his dad floating around on a little lake on the Kansas prairie, fishing sometimes is a great fabric to stitch together a dad's words to his son.
As the afternoon wore on the sun began to sink in the west and the wind stopped, it was still and quiet. Our fingers became chilled, and February reminded us that winter is not quite over. It's hard to decide on a last cast, and right before we decided to pack it up for the day we watched a group of baitfish rush to the surface in the shallow water along an east bank that was warmed by the afternoon sun. I smiled and watched little wild man cast into the rippling water stirred by the schooling minnows. His jig dropped slightly, and with a couple slow cranks on the reel and one tap of the rod tip his line pulled tight. A fish was on and on the run. Hooked up with what I was sure was a large mouth bass, I watched my little man's eyes grow wide and his smile wider. We use light tackle and ease off the drag when crappie fishing, and this little bass put little man's equipment to the test. A couple rises and jumps out of the water finished off the fish's' last grand show before we landed him in the boat.
Crappie fishing is a fantastic pastime. The springtime spawning stages can make for fast action and a strong bite. Whether you are set in your ways, or always trying new techniques and tactics, or somewhere in between, time spent fishing for crappie is never wasted. Fish under a bobber with minnows, vertical jigging brush and docks, or casting and reeling fishing for crappie is one outdoor pastime that is not to be missed!
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| A mess of spring crappie ready to be cleaned. |
