Yesterday I cheated a little and slipped out the back door and down to the river behind us. Ma was doing Christmas decoration stuff that requires fine hands so luckily I was eliminated immediately from any of those duties. I'm sure that had she known I had a few rods in the boat yet she'd have delegated floor washing in the kitchen, but............
Anyway, I grabbed a box of the small frys and nano's plus a jig box and took a walk. There is a rock ledge spanning the river just ahead of a deep pool and about this time of year we see crappies stack in there. Now these aren't humongo crappies, just fin to catch. The usual approach is to lace a plastic on a 1/32 head and float it along under a cork. I like to stand right at the end of the visible rock, cast straight out along it and work the jig thru the water at the point of drop.
I started with a small fry thinking that maybe the larger bait would still get hit but it didn't take long to shift to the nano. Now the nano isn't a huge bait so I had to dig kinda deep in the jigs to find my magic but I did locate three or four of my pet color heads on 1/32 jigs cast on #8 sickles. I have to say, that nano mounts on a #8 sickle in sick-sweet way and this change was indeed magic. The small knocks I saw on the cork using the small fry were in fact sunfish bumping the tails and not able to get hooked. The smaller offering allowed them to stay on the line. I didn't expect to find sunfish at this spot now but I never turn down tangling with sunfish. Nothing monsterous with 7 inches about the upper end of the size for sunnies. Crappies were there and added to the catch and 10 1/2" maybe the tops for those. My surprise fish came in the shape of a walleye of 17 inches. Then, just when I thought I'd had a good enough time, I popped a pike about 26 inches. All told I caught about 30 fish on the one same jig/nano. The nano was a green smelt back over a bluegill belly with a small orange throat patch. Red eyes.
Not keeping any fish I thought I'd better check in before Ma decided to check on me and I no sooner put the gear back in the boat than the door opened. She looked at me and said, quite straight across too, "You're not thinking of fishing are you?" I just said no, that I'd been busy with my guy stuff . I didn't lie since the key phrase in the question was "not thinking of fishing"....no I wasn't thinking of it much after my little fling and really now, isn't fishing being busy with guy stuff?
The last time I fished I had to jump up in size pretty good to catch crappies. New water and cooler temps yesterday so getting smaller was the key. Since I did manage to get here outdoor lights up yesterday too and we are supposed to be up in the mid to upper 30's today I may have to take that little walk again. Kinda fun to relax and not worry about what you catch as long as you catch. Isn't that how everyone got hooked on this sport?
