Crappie.com - Back in the groove in the Grove

Well we slept late not thinking that today would be any different than any other day lately, but I was wrong. Blue skies and bright sun greeted me as I woke around 8 AM. I checked the weather and all seemed well for a trip so I got Linda up and off we went. There was one shower close to the launch and because of some thoughtless boater blocking the ramp we had to wait around 10 minutes to launch. Just got the boat running when the rain hit. We hid under a bridge and I checked the radar (smart phones are great). I saw that it was raining just a short way up the canal so with rain coats on, off we went. 1 mile later we were in bright sunshine. I took it easy on the new motor rebuild so it took us a little longer to get where we were going. I spoke to a gent just leaving as we were launching and he told me that he had caught around 50 bass at a drain out of the marsh, but only kept the limit of 30. I turned into a canal with a drain and Linda caught 1 small bass tossing a beetle spin. I in turn start fishing with one myself and we proceeded to start picking up some sacs along the way. We fished the length of the short canal and another shower showed up. Lucky there was a house boat not far from us so we went wait out the shower on the porch. While there another fellow and his wife showed up to get out of the rain. During our chatting I found out that he duck hunts with my nephew, small world. After the rain pass we went back to what was working but this time it wasn't working as well. We switch to our jig poles and we managed to pull out a few more from along the edge of the lilies. It was a great first day back on the water after being about a month without a boat. We ended the day with 18 small but fat slabs, more that enough to satisfy our need to catch some fish.

I fillet some of them, as we say down here, on the half shell. That is you fillet the fish and leave the skin and scales on. You then grill them scale side down until done. I season them with a little Tony's, a liberal coating of Italian dressing, and a splash of BBQ sauce. I grilled them until flaky, about 12 minutes. Um, they sure were good. I had an old friend and his wife that we hadn't seen in a few years coming over to visit so I didn't get all the pictures I wanted to, but I think y'all get the idea.

"gene"