Fresh Water Angling – The Two Crappies

October 12th, 2023

July 2, 1898 Forest and Stream,

Fresh-Water Angling.
No. IX.—The Two Crappies.
BY FRED MATHER.

Fishing In Tree Tops.

Here a short rod, say 8ft., is long enough, and the line should not be much longer than the rod. A reel is not needed, because the fish should not be allowed more line, even if it were able to take it and wind it about a limb, where you would be in chancery. The boat should be so placed that a fish can be led away from the limbs, if possible, but often there is a desirable opening, like a well, into which the hook is dropped, and then one must take chances of being fouled, and try to keep the fish in the middle of the hole as it is brought up. The uncertainty of landing a fish in such a place constitutes the sport of tree-top fishing.

In my early crappie fishing days we used Limerick hooks as large as No. 2, but in later years, when I fished in Southern waters and had come to the belief which I hold to-day, that the smallest hook which is practicable, is the best, I used hooks as small as No. 6. To-day I would select the Pennel Limerick with turned down eye, not larger than 4, nor smaller than 6, but these hooks are a late invention and are of spring steel, a thing unknown twenty years ago. A foot or two of gut between line and hook is always desirable. Angle worms, grubs and small minnows arc good baits. Unless there is a current through the tree top a sinker is not necessary when worms or grubs arc used, but if the bait be a live minnow it must be weighted in order to prevent it from wandering among the branches: then use a half ounce sinker and attach the gut to the sinker and shorten it to a foot, thus giving the minnow a weight to drag. In such angling one can usually see the fish take the hook and can then check its rushes to a thicket of limbs. In “Much Ado About Nothing” Ursula says:

“The pleasant’st angling is to see the fish
Cut with her golden oars the silver stream,
And greedily devour the treacherous bait.”

If that be true, then fishing for crappies in a tree top, in clear water, should be the highest form of angling; but it is not true, for the angler would prefer to leave the size and species which takes his bait entirely to his imagination while he is bringing it in. This is one of the charms of bait fishing, you don’t know what you have on your line until it comes to the landing net.

While fishing in a tree top in one of the sloos near Potosi. Wis., I saw a crappie take my hook and immediately put the strain of the rod on the fish, but there was an unusual resistance, and there was danger of tearing the mouth out of the struggling crappie, whose every movement sent a thrill up the line and rod. The fish had not fouled my line, for I had seen every motion. Henry Neaville was in the other end of the boat and said: “Keep still; the fish has another line in its mouth,” and Henry lashed his pocket knife to his rod and ran it down and cut another line which was wound around a limb, and I landed the fish. The coarse hook and cheap line told the story; the fish had been hooked a day or more ago, and had taken a turn or two around a limb, and the angler, probably a boy, had strained his line to the breaking point, leaving the fish fast and hungry enough to take the next bait.

Trolling; for Crappies.

While trolling a small spoon in southern Louisiana, for any fish that might incline to that sort of food, I took several of the big-mouth crappies in the still waters of the bayous. I did not get the other species there, although Jordan, “Manual of the Vertebrates,” gives its Southern range as in that State. It was a small spoon made of abalone shell, and about inch long. I do not know the sizes of spoon hooks, because I seldom use them, but have an impression that each maker numbers his wares to suit himself. The spoon was an old one, without feathers, but it spun well, and its exquisite pear ly tints were attractive.

I had other spoons, of many designs and sizes, as well as most known devices for taking fish, including gill nets, for I was collecting fishes for the Smithsonian Institution and the U.S. Fish Commission, and wanted to gather every species that inhabited those waters, even if it never grew to be over an inch in length. And I was not forbidden to enjoy the sport.

The first crappie taken on the spoon was thought to be one of those accidents which occur to anglers, but after taking a dozen or more it was evident that the crappie would afford sport when offered a small spoon. When I changed to a big silver spoon, some 3in. long, no crappies were taken. They knew the capacity of their mouths, and would not rise at the larger one. Here I took the largest crappie I ever saw; it might have weighed 2lbs.; Jordan gives the extreme weight as 3lbs.

Fly-Fishing for Crappies.

It was in Bistineau Lake, in northwest Louisiana, some twenty years ago, that I took my first crappie with a fly. I had a colored boatman to whom my light rods and fly-book were curiosities which were looked at with considerable skepticism, until I took some very large black bass with them, and then he was profuse in his admiration of “dat yah leetle pole no stouter ‘an a coach whip, an’ dem leetle hooks wid fedders on em w’ich ‘pears like mi’ty dry fodder for trout.” By “trout” he meant “black bass,” and when I took a crappie with a red ibis he said: “Dem ah little fedders is good for de sacalay [sac-a-lait] too; golly, I ‘spec’s dey’s good fo’ all de fish in de lake, ‘cept de ole gahs an’ de catties. You don’ ‘spect a catty he come up to de top fo’ yo’ fedders, does yo’?”

“No, Gus, not here in this deep water, but a catty has been taken with a fly in shallow water. We call these things flies, not feathers; don’t you see that they imitate the insects on the water?”

“No, sah, nebber see no flies like w’at vou got in yo’ book, nevah did, fo’ a fac’.”

And no other man ever did. The imagination necessary to recognize a so-called artificial fly as an imitation of any living thing is “not possessed by every man. This ignorant Afro-American did not have it, and I, who was trying to educate him to see a resemblance to nature, was totally lacking in that same quality of imagination.

Verilv it was a case of the blind leading the blind, but I only wanted my pupil to see that my flies were only theoretical imitations of things which might or might not exist, but for such theories his brain was not sufficiently advanced. He saw that a little hook covered with “fedders” would take fish, that had been demonstrated, but that these things should be considered to be “flies” was another thing.

I found the crappie a fairly good riser to the fly, and took many in Lake Bistineau. No doubt they can be so taken in other places. They do not put up as stiff a fight as a yellow perch or a white perch, but with light tackle they afford sport. We neglect many good fishes, in this land of good fishes, because they have not been faithfully written up, and we have no traditions referring to them.

Fresh Water Angling – The Two Crappies

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