The gathering at Lake Blackshear.

After the Crappie Masters tournament in Millbrook Alabama, I headed East to Lake Blackshear in Georgia for a Crappie.com gathering. It was only a 3 hour drive or so, and a pleasant drive at that, going through many small towns, and some big Pecan Orchards.





The campground was right on the lake, a real nice quaint place, with lots of wildlife. Here's a Fox that came through looking for exactly I don't know what. I'm sure his campsite was around there somewhere, but please do stay out of mine! lol
Rusty Parker (Ragfly Jig Man on the crappie.com message board), his wife Brenda, and Precious (their doggie) made me feel right at home. They shared their campsite with me and as it turned out later, they shared many meals with me as well. Great people with plenty of that good old fashion southern hospitality.

Anyway, on to fishing. Rusty Parker took me on a tour of the lake and pointed out so many landmarks and fishing spots that I can't remember. We really did not fish until the next day because I need to get a fishing license. So that we did, and the next day we hit the water with fishing rods in hand. The first spot we went to, right out of the gate, Rusty caught a nice Black as heck Crappie while pitching to a Cypres tree. I knew things were going to get exciting. But to my dismay, we really did not catch any more crappie until much later in the day. We did catch some Stripers and Bluegill, but the Crappie fishing turned cold.

We resorted to Rusty's favorite way to catch Crappie, dock shooting. Lake Blackshear has plenty of docks, and no one around using any of them. So it did not feel like we were intruding at all when we were hanging around a couple yards off those docks.



I've never sling shot the way Rusty does when dock shooting. I would always just pitch to them. This was all new, you had to hang on to the jig, and bend the rod back, then release the jig and let go of the line all at the same time while aiming under the dock. Rusty was awesome at that. He would skip his lure off the water under a dock that had only 8-12 inches of clearance between the water and the dock. It was unreal. He could get it back under there 10-15 feet, no lie.

We went from dock to dock, not really doing much good. Then all the sudden, we got to a dock that really produced. We did not fish it long because it was getting dark, but before we left, I think we had a dozen fish between the two of us. Although I think only maybe two of them were caught by me. I just could not shoot far enough under the docks like Rusty could. This was going to take practice.

When we got back, we had lasagna, yes, lasagna. A typical fishermans food, right! Lol. Popasage and BobbyR had arrived, and BobbyR's wife Joann had brought a big pan of lasagna. It was unexpected, but great. I also met Papasage's lovely wife Fay (faybaby on the forum). Again, that Southern Hospitality was overwhelming. As it turned out, it was guaranteed I was not going to loose any weight that week. Between the Grilled Chicken, the Ribs, the Lasagna, I was not going to go hungry.



When you don't bring a boat with you, you end up fishing with many different people, and you get to check out many different styles of fishing. That's the joy of it, checking out how everyone fishes. Rusty liked dock shooting best. And when Tony Outlaw came down to visit, we mostly trolled or long lined. He had 10, 12 and 14 foot rods off the sides of the front of the boat, and I had much shorter rods I watched off the back of the boat. A lot of rods, and the ability to cover a lot of water. Very nice indeed. We did catch fish, but it was slow going. The ones we did catch seemed larger than the dock shot crappie Rusty and I caught the day before. Although Rusty did go out this same day, and he did come across some real nice sized ones as well, but I just wasn't there. Tony was a hoot. We fished the whole day and into the night, telling jokes and fishing stories. For the night fishing we cast out to dock lights. Also very cool, and productive too. You could see the swirls under the dock lights. Some dock lights even had fan like blades to knock insects into the water. Fish feeders per se.






Saturday morning I fished with DieHard, real name Kim. Great guy, has a nice Ranger boat, super stable, especially for the dock shooting we did. We caught some crappie dock shooting, but all small, so we moved around, tried many different spots, and finally settled into some Spider Rigging. But we never really hit upon the big crappie. The fishing was tough, but we had some good fun together. I improved my dock shooting capabilities, and got to see his spider rigging setup in action. Thank you Kim for taking me out on the water.






The fish fry was scheduled for Saturday at noon. What a great event. The food was awesome, and everyone that attended were just as awesome. We had a lot of fun, took a lot of pictures, and told a lot of stories. Rusty was the Master of Ceremonies. He dialed JimmyS in to bless the meal. Jimmy's words on the phone were heart felt. Thanks Jimmy, wish you could have been there in person.