Not a crappie...

[no1son]

This one is a true story!

Note the inch and a half tube in the upper left jaw. Estimated at mid to upper 30"'s (that translates to about 15#).



This was the first of two muskies that took my fishing partner's crappie tube last week. The second was much larger. My buddy fought that fish for 27 minutes including runs that had the knot holding his line to his spool showing. The one above eventually cut him off, and the second slipped the hook after purposely being given slack. My buddy could barely hold up his rod any more and decided to allow a cutoff rather than losing a spool full of line. Both fish were fought on a 5' ultralight rod with 4# GAMMA on the reel. There was no net available for either fish; so they couldn't be landed anyway, although the second one never tired out enough to try it. The first was from a wall with no beach around for hundreds of yards anyway. BTW muskie season up here doesn't open until in June, and these waters hold some that measure over 50".

We fish crappies a lot in local stocked muskie waters and tangle with them pretty regularly. In those waters most of our jig loss comes from cutoffs, both on their attempts to steal hooked panfish and from them taking the little baits directly. I have seen that later happen a couple of times when the water was clear enough. I wouldn't have believed it myself, but I have seen it and more than once. We still manage to land a number of muskies every year. Last year I took three of them but none of them this big; 32" was my largest last season, although the previous two years produced a 38 and a 40. This is all on ultralight using 4# test mind you.

We get as much muskie action fishing crappies as quite a few who concentrate on them. A bunch of tooth carps for my money. I would rather they had never been stocked around here. All one has to do is swim through and the panfish all head for deep cover and of course any bite in progress simply disappears.

[Crappie 1]

Pretty Cool looking picture.. Thanks for sharing.

[Spawn]

Cool pic, nice story!