As I made my first cast... by Slabsrus

While pacing in and out of the house between rain storms, I wondered if my buddy Luke was going to cancel on our crappie fishing outing. If the weather radar was correct, the hard rain which had been falling all night would be moving east around noon. My kayak and fishing gear had been loaded for a few hours when Luke called and informed me that he was on his way.

At just after 1:00 pm the clouds were almost gone. Luke and I had paddled our kayaks ten minutes from my house and were rigging our rods. Micro jigs and soft plastics were our baits of choice, and the big pine tree just west of us was our first target. The wind had become calm as we approached the large pine tree which was sticking out 30 feet into the cove.



As I made my first cast, landing my jig about 15 feet from the tip of the tree, I wondered if the fish would be able to see our baits in the muddy water created from all the rain. Well I did not wonder long as my bobber made a little twitch then slowly began to disappear under water. I raised my rod tip and reeled in a nice crappie. My next two casts produced another crappie and a nice bluegill. Luke had also begun fishing the same tree and was starting to get into some good fish when I asked, " Are you wanting to keep some?"

" Wouldn't mind keeping a stringer of these!" he replied while holding up a fat crappie for me to see.



It was on!

The stringer came out and I immediately began stringing crappies as Luke laid keepers in the bottom of his kayak until we would take a break to put them on the stringer.

Nearly every cast produced a crappie between eight and ten inches as we worked our way around the big pine tree. We released a lot of fish that probably would have went on someone else stringer, but the way they were biting allowed us to be a bit choosey. After about a dozen nice slabs on the stringer the bite slowed a bit so I told Luke we'd move to the next tree and let this one settle.

The second tree was much smaller then the first but it had several branches, and it protrudes over slightly deeper water. We immediately began catching fish once again, and they were slightly larger then at the big pine. Cast after cast put another crappie on the stringer as Luke and I matched each other fish for fish. The feeding frenzy continued for nearly three hours as we culled our way through dozens of decent fish until we had our 50 fish limit and paddled back to my house.

Shortly after Luke left my house, around 5:30pm, ominous dark clouds had returned. Heavy rain and thunder brought an awesome end to a magnificent day of fishing the calm between the storms.