Thread: If you can't catch crappie, drop down to trout

Last few days I haven't been able to interest crappie from my local pond, while about a week ago I was catching a dozen from the shore. Maybe they liked the rainy weather better than this sunshine. Water is still cold at 58F.

Well if you can't catch crappie, drop down to trout, I figured. So off to a pond about half hour from the house. This one is normally stocked with rainbows, but hasn't been so far this year. A new variety of rainbow is being trialed there to see if it will hold over. There are some browns there as well and they do hold over.

So launched my rowing boat at 8:30 yesterday morning, not a soul on the pond. The wind was pretty strong, and blew me around quite a bit, and the water temp there was 48F, so too early and cold for the recent crowd of paddle-boarders who have shown up the last couple of years.

I decided to row-troll, so tied on a about a 6" Rapala floater and a Johnson spoon on the two rods. Let out about 60 feet of line, and before I got 100 feet I had a fish on the spoon. Jumping, so it was a rainbow. Got that in -- an average size stocker 10-1/2". But the odd thing was, the lake hasn't been stocked yet this year, so it's a holdover. But it should have been bigger than that, if so. Well I wasn't going to argue with it!

Rowed for about 15 minutes and had another hit, but didn't stay on. Another 5 minutes and I connected on the line with the plug. This time with a better brown trout, and it gave a good dogged fight. Not a trophy but a nice trout of 13". Finally got it into the net and added that to the stringer. Ten minutes later another good brown hit on the plug line again. I knew it was a brown because it stayed down and gave another dogged fight. Brought this one in, netted it, and it really tangled up in the net with the plug and 6 pound test leader. It took me a good ten minutes to get everything untangled. This fish was a little larger than the last at 13-1/2", and a little heavier built.

After that I had two more hits, but failed to connect. I fished for another hour before finally giving up. But three nice fish for the smoker, and that felt good. Of course I prefer crappies deep fried, but what's a guy to do if they won't cooperate? You gotta make lemons from lemonade: if the water is too cold for crappies to jump onto yer' hook, trout like it cold, so hit them instead!

It was particularly gratifying to catch something, considering these were holdovers, before the annual stocking.

The morning catch:

Good time spent and bonus trout dinners.