Thursday evening, the 25th of October my Ohio deer hunting friends rolled into town. We had arranged with my brother to take them crappie fishing on Friday. I was getting some good reports of fish being caught in fifteen feet of water. My brother Larry is an avid crappie fisherman and having several brush piles in this depth. By noon they had located several brush piles that held fish, but would not give many up to the old method of slowly retrieving a weed less twister tail grub through the brush piles. On a previous trip my brother was introduced to a method that was producing fall crappie. The bait is vertical jigged above the brush and sometimes the fish seemed to prefer the bait just to be held still above the brush. By 3:00pm they had boated 25 keepers and by 5:30 they had a total of 43 nice keepers, only catching 7 shorts.
Saturday they meet me at my house with a much anticipated Cincinnati favorite, a getta sausage biscuit. We launched the boat below Watts Bar dam about 9:00am and by noon we had boated more than a dozen stripers in the 12 to 20 lbs. class. Despite the wind and chilly temperatures we stayed until 4:30 with a total catch of over 30 stripers. Returning home with the 8 fish limit, we cleaned them which yielded a five gallon bucket of fillets. They kept out a few fillets to cook that night.
The next day they bragged on how great the fish turned out blackened, one my preferred way of preparing striper.
They fished on their own Sunday morning before heading north. I am looking forward to the upcoming Ohio deer hunt and hope it will be as productive as it’s been in the pass.
The following Thursday longtime friend and hunting partners Gary Quincy stop by my house after finishing up the last part of is hunting trip. I left him in Idaho 7 days earlier, where we had bird hunted for ten days. He returned to Nebraska waterfowl hunting and participating in opening weekend of pheasant.
We planned to do a little trout fishing Friday morning below Norris Dam. The weather was great and the fish were biting. Gary had not trout fished in years. So catching a trifecta of rainbows, browns, and brooks made for a perfect day.
Take someone fishing, Greg