Hamilton Reef
04-30-2006, 11:03 AM
Sunfish a wonderful substitute for lack of crappies
http://www.mlive.com/outdoors/statewide/index.ssf?/base/sports-0/1145997621169490.xml&coll=1
Sunday, April 30, 2006 By Bob Gwizdz
UNION -- The crappie fishing wasn't going well. We caught a couple of fish on one spot, moved, struck out there, moved to another spot and caught one more. So after 90 minutes with just three crappies in the livewell, Jim Horn said he had another idea.
Horn maneuvered his bass boat into a canal at the back of a bay and re-rigged, replacing his multi-tailed crappie jig with a tiny hook and a single small split shot, then baited up with half of a nightcrawler.
Just minutes later, he reeled in a 9 1/2-inch redear sunfish.
Horn said he'd found the big sunfish a couple of years earlier on a similar expedition on this small Cass County lake. He pulled into the canal, which was about five feet deep in the middle, to look for evidence of spawning bass when he saw a bunch of big panfish.
"I pulled up to the bank, got out, and we started turning over rocks and logs and stuff looking for worms," he said. "We found a bunch of them, got back in the boat and started fishing."
He and his partner whacked the big sunfish that day, Horn said. So now, when he's headed out crappie fishing, he often brings along some live bait, just in case.
He went out before dawn the morning we went and picked up a couple dozen nightcrawlers from his lawn.
"That's one of the benefits of not putting pesticides on your lawn," he said.
Unfortunately, he hadn't thought the situation thoroughly through. He had only two little hooks with him and it wasn't long before I'd snagged up on some limbs and the 2-pound test line I was using popped just like the Detroit Lions' playoff dreams do every year.
I went back to the crappie jig and fished it about three feet down under a small bobber, tipping the hook with a piece of a nightcrawler. In no time, I caught a small bluegill, then a nicer one.
But the bobber often shimmied or sank and I was unable to connect. (My guess is that the hook on the crappie jig was just too big for a lot of those fish to get their lips around.) We dug through the tackle boxes and came up with a tiny jighead (about a 1/32nd ounce), I tied it on the line, threaded about a third of a nightcrawler on it, cast it and started dragging it back along the bottom. Almost immediately, I tied into a 10-inch bluegill.
We fooled around with the panfish -- there seemed to be more bluegills than redears, the opposite of the way it was when Horn first found the fish, he said -- for about an hour until we ran out of worms. We caught about dozen really nice ones, a few more decent ones, a bunch of small ones and a handful of bass that wouldn't leave our worms alone.
Both species of sunfish were likely in the canal -- as were the bass -- in search of warmer water. The black bottom of the canal absorbs the heat better than lighter-colored bottom and because the canal was largely protected from the wind, the still water holds its heat better. It's unlikely either species were in there to spawn; the water temperature was in the 50s, well below optimal spawning temperature for sunfish.
Redears, commonly known as shellcrackers, are not native to Michigan. But to the south; they have been stocked in many lakes in the lower tiers of counties in this state and have thrived. They are called shellcrackers because they feed on small mollusks and invertebrates, using bones in their throats to crack the shells of snails, etc. Some have theorized that the spread of zebra mussels will prove to be a bonus for shellcrackers, though I am not aware of any research that shows that to be so.
Typically plumper than bluegills, redears, which more closely resemble pumpkinseeds, can be kept for the table at smaller sizes than bluegills, but when they're large, there isn't appreciably more meat on them than the bluegills.
Redears are more often bottom feeders than bluegills and are less easily taken on artificial lures or flies than `gills. They typically occupy areas that are less weedy than bluegills would -- anglers often target the open areas between weed beds when fishing for redears.
After we ran out of bait, we went back out on the lake and found some crappies in the weeds. We caught a handful of them on jigs, but it was anticlimactic -- anytime you can catch a bunch of 9- and 10-inch sunfish, it's hard to get excited about crappies.
http://www.mlive.com/outdoors/statewide/index.ssf?/base/sports-0/1145997621169490.xml&coll=1
Sunday, April 30, 2006 By Bob Gwizdz
UNION -- The crappie fishing wasn't going well. We caught a couple of fish on one spot, moved, struck out there, moved to another spot and caught one more. So after 90 minutes with just three crappies in the livewell, Jim Horn said he had another idea.
Horn maneuvered his bass boat into a canal at the back of a bay and re-rigged, replacing his multi-tailed crappie jig with a tiny hook and a single small split shot, then baited up with half of a nightcrawler.
Just minutes later, he reeled in a 9 1/2-inch redear sunfish.
Horn said he'd found the big sunfish a couple of years earlier on a similar expedition on this small Cass County lake. He pulled into the canal, which was about five feet deep in the middle, to look for evidence of spawning bass when he saw a bunch of big panfish.
"I pulled up to the bank, got out, and we started turning over rocks and logs and stuff looking for worms," he said. "We found a bunch of them, got back in the boat and started fishing."
He and his partner whacked the big sunfish that day, Horn said. So now, when he's headed out crappie fishing, he often brings along some live bait, just in case.
He went out before dawn the morning we went and picked up a couple dozen nightcrawlers from his lawn.
"That's one of the benefits of not putting pesticides on your lawn," he said.
Unfortunately, he hadn't thought the situation thoroughly through. He had only two little hooks with him and it wasn't long before I'd snagged up on some limbs and the 2-pound test line I was using popped just like the Detroit Lions' playoff dreams do every year.
I went back to the crappie jig and fished it about three feet down under a small bobber, tipping the hook with a piece of a nightcrawler. In no time, I caught a small bluegill, then a nicer one.
But the bobber often shimmied or sank and I was unable to connect. (My guess is that the hook on the crappie jig was just too big for a lot of those fish to get their lips around.) We dug through the tackle boxes and came up with a tiny jighead (about a 1/32nd ounce), I tied it on the line, threaded about a third of a nightcrawler on it, cast it and started dragging it back along the bottom. Almost immediately, I tied into a 10-inch bluegill.
We fooled around with the panfish -- there seemed to be more bluegills than redears, the opposite of the way it was when Horn first found the fish, he said -- for about an hour until we ran out of worms. We caught about dozen really nice ones, a few more decent ones, a bunch of small ones and a handful of bass that wouldn't leave our worms alone.
Both species of sunfish were likely in the canal -- as were the bass -- in search of warmer water. The black bottom of the canal absorbs the heat better than lighter-colored bottom and because the canal was largely protected from the wind, the still water holds its heat better. It's unlikely either species were in there to spawn; the water temperature was in the 50s, well below optimal spawning temperature for sunfish.
Redears, commonly known as shellcrackers, are not native to Michigan. But to the south; they have been stocked in many lakes in the lower tiers of counties in this state and have thrived. They are called shellcrackers because they feed on small mollusks and invertebrates, using bones in their throats to crack the shells of snails, etc. Some have theorized that the spread of zebra mussels will prove to be a bonus for shellcrackers, though I am not aware of any research that shows that to be so.
Typically plumper than bluegills, redears, which more closely resemble pumpkinseeds, can be kept for the table at smaller sizes than bluegills, but when they're large, there isn't appreciably more meat on them than the bluegills.
Redears are more often bottom feeders than bluegills and are less easily taken on artificial lures or flies than `gills. They typically occupy areas that are less weedy than bluegills would -- anglers often target the open areas between weed beds when fishing for redears.
After we ran out of bait, we went back out on the lake and found some crappies in the weeds. We caught a handful of them on jigs, but it was anticlimactic -- anytime you can catch a bunch of 9- and 10-inch sunfish, it's hard to get excited about crappies.