The Mid-Atlantic Sportsman: A Crappy Day Turned Into A Crappie Day

Myself and my friend Dan fished another bass tournament yesterday. After doing pretty good in the first one we fished we were semi confident we would have another good showing in this one.

At 3:15 my alarm went off and at 3:30 Dan was at my house ready to go. We got to the pond at around 5:15 and loaded everything up and waited for the 6am start. As we were waiting we both were worried with the 40 degree air temperature and 15 to 20 mph winds.

Well it was a rough tournament for us. With the thick lily pads and heavy winds we had trouble finding a pattern that worked. We started with rubber worms and chatterbaits, but with only one bite on the worm in the first 30 minutes we knew we had to switch it up. We got out of the wind a little bit and saw a good number of fish crashing bait in the lily pads. We decided to switch to frogs and started getting bites right away.

Our hookup ratio was terrible. Some fish missed the frogs, some we set the hook to soon and some just came off. An hour and a half into it and we still had no keeper bass in the livewell.

Finally Dan hooked up on a frog and we had the first bass in the boat. Of course this fish measured 11.5 inches so back in the water it went. The wind really picked up then and we couldn't get out of it. It became too windy to use the frogs so with only 1 hour and 30 minutes left in the tourney we went to some open water and threw chatterbaits and spinners. Dan caught a nice pickeral which went in the live well for the biggest pickeral category. He then caught two more bass, but both were also shy of the 12inch minimum.

I struggled all tourney. I lost a nice fish on a senko early and after that had nothing going for most of the day. I finally hooked up about 30 minutes before the end of the tourney and it turned out to be a nice crappie. So in the livewell it went for the biggest crappie category. Next cast and I'm hooked up again and wouldn't you know it an even bigger crappie.

Well the tourney ended and with no keeper bass we let the pickeral go and decided to skip weigh ins and go crappie fishing. Over the next hour and a half we put 13 more nice crappies in the boat on little spinners. And at least we had enough for a fish fry. We could have stayed and caught a bunch of other nice crappies, but I had other commitments that day so we headed home.