Thread: Pics, Tricks, and Licks

Yellow Creek Lake - What a lake!
For anyone looking for a great body of water to spend some time crappie fishing on - I'd recommend this one.

For the East/West tourney, we stayed here:

This campground is very close (at either ramp within 10 minutes) to the lake. The campground facilities were clean and for the most part well-kept. BobG, BobG's son, and myself called BobG's camper home for the weekend. Let me tell you, ruffing it we weren't! So much so, that when the alarm went off Saturday morning at 6:00am no one made any move to get up.
Finally around 8:15am, we all realized it was 'bout time to eat breakfast.

We made it to the lake somewhere around 10:00-10:30am. It was raining, windy, and cold making our two piece rainsuits necessary to ward off both the rain and the cold.
We were there to find fish, pattern them, narrow down bait choices, and put together a game plan for Sunday. We had a head start, in that, Bob had been on fish a few weeks prior - making our starting point much easier to pick.
Wood was a key feature - and we fished some of the larger blowdowns. Not all wood held fish, and the fish we did find didn't want to look at the same thing long. We needed the "big three" to keep getting bit: minnows, tube jigs, and combination jigs.
Knowing we had nothing for dinner Saturday evening, you could say we fished for our lives. As the day wore on, the wind and rain picked up. By 5:15pm the dampness and cold set into all of us and we headed in - looking forward to a hot meal and warm shower:




Considering Saturday's conditions, I think we did fairly well. Bob had the depth figured out (which was a key role), and I fished a pattern that produced some of the bigger fish.
Now, I need to say something about BobG here - just to let everyone know just how great a friend he really is. I fished a completely different pattern then he was on Saturday, knowing that I wasn't in the quantity area. This really bothered Bob that I wasn't boating as many fish as he was. It was his son that realized the fish I did bring to the boat were substantial. Bob tried and tried to get me to fish his way to get hooked up - "Zig, drop that tube down over here about eight(8) feet. I feel bad your not catching many."
Thanks Bob. Not every angler I would be fishing against the next day would do that!
However when I let on, "It's ok Bob. We now have two patterns that are working. Tomorrow, I may just bank on a few good bites. Hope that quality will win out over quantity." - I should have listened to his plan: "No way, I'm fishing for five(5) fish, then I'll see if I can get some culling fish." (Smart move)

After a top shelf dinner of fresh crappie fillets, I became head knife sharpener and line changer. (I should have never talked Bob into stripping his reel and putting something better on - especially my own stock!)

Sunday morning we found ourself at the lake at 7:00am. Rain had stopped, wind had died down, and it was colder. We had 5 hours to put 5 fish 10" or better in the boat. So we headed out:



The fish came to the boat much slower Sunday morning. Early on I had a chance............................by 10:30am I was looking for a short stick of dynamite.
We stopped fishing at 11:59:30am, only after watching Bob for close to 10 minutes with his problem:


He hooked a fish that wrapped him around a branch.................and there was nothing he could do about it. You could watch the rod move as the fish thrashed around, but he couldn't pull it loose. As you can see in the pic - he went in after it...............and ended up getting his rod tip stuck too!

Finally it all came loose:

Yeah, sure it was a fish Bob! You do know the difference between a hang-up and a fish right?

Trust me on this - he knows the difference!
Bob's final five(5) of the tourney:


Total weight for his catch:


The big girl of the day, caught during a return trip to a tree that had shut down on us previously:

(sorry for cuttin' that head off Bob)

Zig's only legal fish of the morning. That "Crying Towel" sure was soaked Sunday!:


Congratulations Bob!

You sure are a "CrappieMaster" in my book!
I had a great time this past weekend, and will certainly be doing this again with you. I tried, you stuck it to me.................but for some reason we both laughed about it.

Next tourney, we hope more anglers will have the time to come'on out.
How much fun is it? Well, we had over 9lbs. of fish kept on Saturday (not counting the fish we released.), over 5lbs. Sunday. We caught not only crappie but bluegill, northern pike, largemouth (Bob lost a dandy boatside) and smallmouth bass, and yellow perch.

Now.......................how did that "wiggle" go? Or was it more of a "jiggle?' :D

Thanks for the great hospitality Bob and Cody! I'll make sure we have baked beans this spring!

Thanks Zig! Great Pics!
I talked to Bob, sounds like I missed a really good time. Maybe next time we can have an East team vs. a West team?

We're going to work on a tournament series for next year. Maybe we can get something out your way.

Mike

Thanks for sharing, looked like an awesome trip. Where is this lake located?

Yellow Creek Lake

Thanks zig. If anyone else is interested on the PFBC website www.fish.state.pa.us

under biologist reports area 8 they have some field surveys of the lake from 2004 and 2002 with some pics