The Day I Caught My First Crappie!

I caught my first Crappie on a day when the fish weren't biting.  At least that's what my first cousin Bill said and Bill knew everything there was to know about fishing for Crappie. Six years older than me, in my 12 year old mind he knew everything there was to know about Ol' Paper Mouth.

 Most of the men in my dad's family were go-getters and worked from first light to well past dark; not Bill.  Farming at its best is a hard life, one that he didn't like.  He was an early riser and more likely than not he would eat breakfast, feed the cows, throw his boat in the back of his old truck and head to the lake.  I spent a week with Bill when I was still a kid and fresh from the city.

Now Bill had a reputation for knowing where every crappie, bluegill and catfish in his part of the state lived and what they would want for dinner on any particular day.  These fish were his specialty and fishing for them was more than just a sport to him; it was a competition with himself and everyone else! 

We reached Grenada Lake early that morning when the mist was still on the lake and the sound of loons could be heard in the distance.  We lifted Bill's flat aluminum boat out of his old pickup truck and carried it to the water.  Bill attached the 7 horsepower Johnson outboard motor he'd had in the truck. 

Except for a few things we'd brought for lunch all we had to carry to the boat was a bait bucket.   It held a hundred or so minnows that Bill had dipped out of his own bait tank. He had made it out of an old concrete watering trough that the cows weren't using any more.

We pushed out into the water and he shoved the throttle of the little motor wide open and we went skimming across the surface of that huge lake as if the devil himself was chasing us!  

Grenada Lake at that time was only about 11 years old.  Woods and fields that had been there over a decade before, now were covered with water.  Tree tops poked through the surface of the water and logs posed navigational hazards to all those who wandered into the part of the lake that we intended to fish!

These obstacles didn't slow down Bill.  Once we bounced over the top of a log and broke the shear pin on the propeller.  No problem!  He simply reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out another pin, pulled the motor up and with a pair of wire pliers, took out the broken pin and inserted the new one.  He started the motor and once again we were rocketing across the lake.

In a short while he cut the engine and unwound two long cane poles.  He showed me how to grab a minnow and how to put him on the hook.  We were ready to start fishing!

He eased the boat into a large tree top poking up out of the water.  He showed me how to lower my minnow near one of the branches and watch the bobber for a bite.  Immediately it was jerked under water!  I yanked back and on the end of my line was a beautiful silver fish.  A crappie!

Bill was happy for me as he put my fish on the stringer.  I put another minnow on the hook and lowered it into the tree top.  Ziinnnng!  The bobber sank under the surface again.  This time the scrap was a little more intense because this crappie was larger than the first.  Bill added my fish to the other one on the stringer.

Unfortunately he hadn't even had a bite on his end of the boat.  By this time he was muttering to himself as I baited my hook and eased the minnow into the water next to a twig.  As I hauled up a third fish, I heard Bill muttering something about the fish not biting now.

 I heard the motor kick on as I brought up my fourth big fish.  Bill hit the throttle hard and yelled at me over the noise. "They're not biting here.  We're going somewhere else.  He didn't like being second best!