Trip savers

Abandoning crappie for bass wise decision

In this file photo Alan Thomas brings in one of several largemouth bass he caught in a strip pit on the north side of Lake Dardanelle.
In this file photo Alan Thomas brings in one of several largemouth bass he caught in a strip pit on the north side of Lake Dardanelle.

RUSSELLVILLE -- When you go crappie fishing in the winter, it's wise to also take a bass fishing rig.

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Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

When the crappie fishing didn’t pan out, Alan Thomas of Russellville and the writer saved the day by catching a mess of largemouth bass on Lake Dardanelle.

I have had an intense hankering for some crappie fillets lately, or maybe I've just had an intense hankering to catch some crappie. These yearnings reached critical mass the past couple of weeks as I heard story after story of people catching slab crappie around the state.

Mark Hedrick, co-host of Ray Tucker's Arkansas Outdoors, It's a Natural radio program on KABZ-FM, 103.7-FM, Little Rock, has caught some giants on Lake Maumelle fishing with Johnny Lewis and others.

One does not expect to catch a lot of crappie in February, but one can expect to catch big crappie if he can find them, Hedrick said. With water temperatures hovering around 50-55 degrees, crappie are hunkered around structure in depths of 22-29 feet. You have to count a light jig down to the proper depth and reel it as slow as cold molasses.

That's difficult in the best conditions, but even more so on the windy days that define mid-winter in Arkansas.

Similar reports have been coming in from other quarters, including Lake Dardanelle, one of my favorite haunts for all fishing, as well as for duck hunting. On a lark, I proposed such a trip to Alan Thomas, who was already a step ahead of me.

"I've got a bucket of minnows sitting in the front of my boat," Thomas said Wednesday. "I don't know where I'm going, but I'm going."

Thomas said he has the best success catching crappie during the winter around various bridges.

"Creek channels run under those bridges," Thomas said. "There's always current running through there. That funnels food through there and attracts baitfish, which attracts crappie. If we hit it right, we can load up."

Hitting it right would have been to fish Wednesday, when the weather was still and warm. However, reality dictates that one fishes when he can, not when he should. "Can" was Thursday, when a high-pressure front churned up a stiff, bitterly cold northwest wind.

I called Thomas as I drove toward Russellville. He was already on the water in his flatbottom Waco. He described the experience as "interesting."

His boat doesn't have a trolling motor, which makes it impossible to control and position a boat in the wind. My War Eagle has a trolling motor, but the boat is so light that an electric motor struggles to overcome strong wind.

"Do you think maybe it would be better on Lake Overcup?" I asked. "I've heard they've been slaying the crappie over there."

Thomas left Lake Dardanelle immediately and drove over to scout Overcup. He called and said it was a no-go.

"It's a bear out there today," he said.

We launched my boat on the north side of Lake Dardanelle in an area that provided nominal shelter from the wind. We intended to fish a strip pit where the water reaches a maximum depth of about 35 feet. It has a lot of brush and other natural cover in the 22- to 29-foot range. Even with the sun beating down on that bank, the water was 8.6 degrees.

It wasn't.

We worked the most productive section of the bank slowly, using the trolling motor to control a wind-assisted drift. I fished a live minnow under a bobber at about 22 feet, and Thomas tight-lined a minnow off the bottom. We didn't get a sniff, so we made the short run to a bridge at the mouth of Illinois Bayou.

My electronic graph showed voluminous clouds of baitfish, as well as what appeared to be strategically-placed brush piles on the bottom. The current blasted through the chute like a jet, making it impossible to keep the boat still and on station even on 4-power.

The other side of the channel showed even more bait on the graph, but we could not entice a fish to bite.

Defeated, we snaked through narrow canals to another strip pit at Shiloh Park, behind a tire shop. There was little wind there, and the water was clear. There was plenty of brush in the water, along with assorted stickups, chunks of metal and other stuff that might hold crappie.

By then I was pretty fed up with crappie fishing. I was content to manage the boat while Al fished, but then I got bored. I picked up a creek fishing rig that carried a Luck-E-Strike RC Freak crankbait. If nothing else, I at least could get in some precision casting practice.

I put on a show making circus casts under low limbs, between tight stickups and into other impossible, teacup-size spots. A strike encouraged me, and then I bounced the lure off the top of a brush pile. A 14-inch largemouth struck. It seemed to have exhausted all of its energy on the strike because it did not fight afterward.

With that, Al abandoned his crappie pole and picked up his own creek fishing rig. It had a broken-back Rapala crankbait, and it wasn't long before he caught a bass, too.

The mood lightened considerably, and we settled into the kind of conversations between strikes that we always seem to have, such as toilet tissue preferences.

"Charmin Red for me," Al said. "Two things I don't skimp on are gasoline and T.P. Buy cheap gas or cheap T.P., and you'll pay for it in the end, if you know what I mean."

There is no explanation for how these things come up. They just do.

It's the same kind of logic that makes guys bring bass rods on a crappie fishing trip. They saved the day.

Sports on 02/15/2015

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