By accounts, now is a perfect time to catch magnum-size crappie on lakes around the state.
The fishing is fairly easy, too, unless you are in the boat with a standup comedy team, as I was last Thursday when I fished Lake Maumelle with Mark Hedrick and his son Matt Hedrick.
The trip started as a Mark Hedrick trip usually starts, as a bass fishing trip. The plan was to catch largemouths and Kentucky bass on the west end of the lake with crankbaits.
Mark Hedrick, co-host of Ray Tucker's radio program Arkansas Outdoors, It's a Natural on KABZ-FM, 103.7, had dialed in the pattern over the week. Big largemouths were tight-lipped that day, but we caught a mess of small Kentuckies.
I got a hard strike from what felt like a big fish on a Yo-Zuri crankbait that broke my leader at the splice. That's the first time an Alberto knot has failed me, but the lure floated to the surface a few minutes later and it was quickly back in action. I also hooked and lost a big chain pickerel.
Matt got on my case right away.
"Why would you even think about using a leader out here? That's crazy!" he said.
Mark Hedrick complained incessantly about Matt whizzing crankbaits past his head.
"You're going to stick one of those in my ear accidentally and it's going to be bad," Mark warned.
"If I stick one in your ear, it won't be on accident," Matt retorted.
Try to fish amid that kind of banter. It speaks well of us all that we caught anything at all.
With the bass not cooperating as expected, Mark announced that he wanted to fish for crappie. All of Mark's bass fishing trips turn into crappie trips. Matt fought it as long as he could, so he suggested a mid-lake spot that Mark had plugged into his GPS as a waypoint.
Minutes later we were there. Mark circled the structure slowly and tossed out a marker buoy before positioning in deep water about 15 yards away. He got out a couple of spinning rigs consisting of light-action rods and reels spooled with 4-pound test line.
"The lighter the line, the better out here," Mark said. "As clear as this water is, 6-pound test looks like rope. If I could get away without breaking off all the time, I'd use 2-pound test."
He tied on 1/8-ounce lead jigs and attached small, white sassy-shad type swimbaits. Before casting, he used a pink Zoom marker pen to paint the sides of the lure, and then he painted the head chartreuse.
"That's the color out here," Mark said.
The Hedricks cast near the buoy, counted the bait down to 10 and began reeling slowly. A big black crappie weighing nearly 3 pounds hit Mark's first cast. We caught crappie steadily for the rest of the afternoon.
Mark bought a new supply of swimbaits but couldn't find them. He had boxes and bags strewn all over the deck, and he accused Matt of taking them out of the boat, but Matt denied it.
I didn't catch as many fish as the Hedricks, and Matt caught noticeably more. I broke off on a snag, and Matt quietly tied on a different color. It was black and gold, and my catch rate increased almost immediately.
Mark finally noticed.
"When the water temperature starts falling and the light angle slants the way it does in the fall, a lot of times they respond to a darker color like this," Mark said.
"Listen to him," Matt said. "He sounds like Bill Dance, just making stuff up on the fly. 'When the water temperature starts falling and the ...' What is it you said about the light angle? You don't have a clue what you're talking about."
"You'll have a clue what I'm talking about when I stop letting you use my boat," Mark countered.
Meanwhile the fish kept biting. All kinds of fish. We caught crappie, big bluegills and brawling white bass. We even caught a couple of largemouths. The bite stopped when the sun dropped behind the hills, but I flung one last cast as the Hedricks secured their gear.
It was a Sebile lipless crankbait that sunk to the bottom before I engaged the spool. As it came off the bottom, it hit something mushy, like a stump. I gave it a hard yank and it broke free, or so it seemed. I lost contact with the bait, so I reeled as fast as I could until the mushy feeling returned, but my contact with the bait was still tentative.
The fish broke the surface in front of us, and we all gasped. It was a largemouth that looked, from Matt's experienced eye, to be about 8 pounds. One prong of a treble hook was in its head. It shed my lure with one violent shake, and it was over.
I should have been disappointed, I guess, but I wasn't.
It's hard to be disappointed when you have a cooler full of crappie to clean.
Sports on 11/08/2015