Mississippi Yet Again - Fall Camp

I’m back, back camping with Billbob, and fishing with my buddy Tom (TomTom on the board) in good old Mississippi, on Sardis Lake. I had originally planned to come to Sardis directly from LOZ where I was the week before, but I ended up going home first. I went home, picked up my boat, my dog Abbey, and my fishing partner Tom and off we went, on another ten hour drive. It was a long drive, but it is always worth the trip to see all my fishing friends down here in Mississippi. And the fish, they are just so big, and plentiful. They will "wear you out".

Tom and I pulled crank baits, Strike King Series 3 and Bandit 300’s. The darker colors seemed to work better in the morning, and light colors after around 10:00-11:00. We were certainly no experts, but this was just an observation, which we also heard from others as well.



We killed them, we caught so many fish it was unbelievable. That’s what you’ll find on a great fishery like Sardis. It does have a 12 inch limit on Crappie, and you catch a lot of fish before you catch one over 12 inches. But it sure is fun. It may be 50 to one, you catch 50 fish to one keeper. Many are nice sized crappie just under 12 inches long, and catching all these fish is what really makes it a great time. Heck, I could not get Tom to come off the lake. I had to set a time limit, an agreed to end time, and even then, he’s begging for one more pass over that supposed “hot spot”.

My dog Abbey was a great fishing partner. A lot better than Tom, at least she stayed quiet and did not complain about getting off the lake when it was time to leave. We were out all day, all we had were a couple soda's, some water for Abbey, and a couple of Billbob's breakfast biscuits that we all shared, including Abbey.


Abbey was a hit on the water and at the camp. Even the Maj liked her.


I always clean Crappie with a simple fillet knife. Don G tells me I've got to use an electric knife. He shows me how to use the electric knife by cleaning our fish. Thanks Don.

Note to self: Always pretend you don't know how to clean fish, makes things easier!


Look at these monsters.


Now the next day I did clean my own fish with the electric fillet knife. I have to say, it is so much easier. The reason is the fish are so darn big down here, their rib bones need to be cut with an electric knife -- its that or a chain saw! I found that I could get more meat too. I could run across the backbone a lot smoother than with a knife. The filet did not come out as choppy as when I use a regular filet knife. Seemed I got more meat. I don't think I'll ever clean fish the old fashioned way again.


I’ve done this trolling for Crappie thing now twice, on two different trips to Mississippi. It’s kinda cool. Let the lines out and just sit back and watch. Very casual fishing. Very fun, lots of moving around and you cover a lot of water.

It’s neat catching a variety of fish too. You get to learn how they respond and hit the lure. Stripers hit hard, and take the bait sideways. You've got to watch them, a big Striper will cross up your lines in a heart beat. Catfish, yes, Catfish will hit your crank bait too. They don’t seem to hit real hard, at least not like the Stripers, but once on, they place a lot of drag on your line, and will just twirl and twirl back there, slime up your line and turning it into a twisted mess.

Crappie on the other hand, at least big crappie, will hit hard and will bend your pole fast. They don’t seem to go as far sideways as Stripers, and if you can get their mouths to the surface, you can water ski them in. Once you got them to the surface, you can see how big their mouths are and judge their size well before you get them to the boat. You learn real fast on these big paper-mouths, to get that net out on a big mouthed slab crappie. You catch so many small ones you really don’t want to loose a big one when you get one on.


Besides all the other cooking taking place at Billbob's campsite, I saw Billbob making bread taking up quite a lot of time. Setting it up to rise twice. All this work for plain old bread you can buy in the store cheap enough. Little did I know this was special bread -- jalapeno and pepperoni bread. Very tasty indeed. Billbob put big chunks of jalapeno and big slices of pepperoni inside the bread dough. What a cool idea, or in the case of the Jalapeno bread, quite hot! It was quite a hit at the fish fry, everyone liked it. My dog Abbey liked it too, although I had to save her from a slice of the Jalapeno that accidentally fell on the ground.


It seemed to start with a small photo in the 2011 Mississippi Calendar, and it’s done gone viral. Now everyone is doing it. The saying “dondon is a gewber” is now on everyone's mind, or at least on their forehead.


The fish fry was great, had lots of good food, awesome deserts too. I just know, like me, everyone had to have eaten way too much. I had a wonderful opportunity below to capture a photo of all the Crappie.com generations; the Whippersnappers, Tweeners, and Geezers. Not really a rare sighting to see these Crappie.com groups together, but rare to see them appropriately labeled like their t-shirts indicate! Although not a quite a Bigfoot sighting, I did think it was cool.