I got invited to go crappie fishing with Jeff and his daughters friend, David. Being that David hasn’t fished a lot we decided to go to our favorite crappie lake, Morrison, hoping the bite was still hot. We were on the water by 8:30 and started long lining jigs and Sliders shortly after. David was the first to connect, his first ever crappie. In fact, he caught the first five!
The bite today was slow but steady, not as good as it has been but good enough to keep us happy. We were using the same program, 1/16 jigs with Sliders and a spray of Slab Sauce or G Sauce. We were running our jigs 8-10 feet down at about 1 mph and the lighter colors, funky monkey and Tennessee shad, seemed to work the best.
About an hour into our trip David announced, after catching another crappie, that he had just tied Jeff. Apparently he was keeping a running tally on his phone, Something fun to do he said. Well, if you want to poke the bear, challenge Jeff to a fishing contest. From then on it was game on. They were like a couple of gladiators in a life or death showdown, a couple of rutting bucks battling it out in the woods, two soccer moms on black Friday.
By 1:30 we were at 99 fish and decided that one more and we would call it a day. #100 ended up being a small gill, we couldn’t end the day with a small gill. David caught #100(b) and posed for another picture, reminding us that he had caught the first and the last. Or so he thought.
After we had wrapped up rods and stowed the gear we found out the start battery was dead so, darn, we had to troll the length of the lake back to the launch. Final score for the day- Jeff-44, me-40 and the rookie-32 for a grand total of 116. Jeff had a good run at the end to break a 40-40 tie. David was right, the contest was something fun to do.
Jeff kept 12 crappie and 8 gills for dinner and the rest were returned to the water. David said he had a good time and was ready to do it again. He also had the observation of the day, the crappie bite better when you spray SlabSauce on your jig. Smart man.
