Pony ExpressTuesday

[grb22]

We were visiting family in KC on Monday and decided to stay an extra day and try to catch a few crappie. My brother had some success on sunday morning up at Smithville so we had originally decided to go there; at the last second we changed our minds and decided to go to Pony Express up by Cameron. It is not too well known compared to the Truman's, LOZ's, Stockton, etc., but we used to go up there a few times a year and always had good success. My son had never been crappie fishing so we thought that P.E. would be a good place for him to start. Between the 3 of us (my son, father and myself), we probably coaught between 75 and 100 crappie, mostly very small stuff (6-9 inches), in about 4 hours of fishing; had a great time. We did manage to catch 12 keepers, 5 or 6 between 9-10 inches, 4 or 5 between 10 and 12 inches, and a couple over 12 inches. My son caught a 14 inch slab and said it was one of his favorite fishing trips ever; a definite success! Caught all of them around the standing timber and fallen trees between 20 and 50 feet from the bank. Used curley-tailed plastic jigs all day. We had pretty good success casting and retrieving the jigs, but only caught small ones that way. Found a couple of fallen trees with a gaggle of branches everywhere; caught all of the bigger fish vertical jigging between the branches at a depth of 5-10 feet. Lost count of the number of jigs we lost, but well worth it! Best part was, we were, literally, the only people on the lake; not another boat on the entire lake! Unbelievable.

If you want to catch a lot of fish but not a lot of size, Pony Express is biting great.

[Jigging15]

Great story. I am always glad to see the kids catching fish or at least getting the chance to go. Welcome again to the site. You will find some great info. on here. And some great people also.

[mark lo]

Good job, keep them kids fishing.

[LOZcrappie]

Nice work!

[Just Jiggin]

Thats a great day of fishing. It's good to here the kids catching the biggest I'm sure he's hooked for life. Once again welcome to the board.

[Jackpot]

I bet your son had a great time catching that 14-incher! Sounds like a fun trip.

Mike
"Jackpot"

[FROSTY]

Sounds like a GREAT family outing!! WTG!

[beagle man]

welcome and nice story, sound's like you had a ball, congrat's,,,,
later man

[cook]

I hit PE 10-20 times a year-never got a 14"-congrats

[grb22]

I hit PE 10-20 times a year-never got a 14"-congrats

I hear ya, to catch an 11 or 12 incher there was always rare for us; it sure surprised us too (of course, I didn't actually see him measure it, he just told me it was 14 ", so I am taking his word for it ) It looked HUGE compared to the smaller fish we had in the live well. We took a picture of him holding it up against my biggest fish of the day (about 11 1/2") so that he could prove that he beat his old-man, I'll try and figure out how to post a photo on here so he can show off a little bit, he will love seeing his picture on the internet!

We had our best success in the first little cove past the fish cleaning dock (in fact, it was just down the hill from the parking lot), also caught several in the main arm to the left along the far bank, but all of the keepers came from that first cove.

I remember before Smithville was built PE used to be a fairly busy place, I guess that is no longer true. It was totally deserted, almost like our own private lake.