Crappy Crappie Clickers...

It was nice and calm for the first few hours Saturday morning, even a little cloud cover.



Hit a few spots then wandered around. We happened to be near the boat show and surfacing sand bass near Clear Lake and the island. They started later Saturday morning due to the cloud cover, I guess. Don't tell anybody, but we cast our crappie jigs out there... all of 20 feet with an 1/8 ounce jig. It didn't matter, we caught sandies for about 20 minutes, then moved back to crappie jigging.

We have a clicker to count how many we catch, but we suck at it. I guess when you're having fun catching crappie, too focused to remember the clicker.
We thought we ended the day with 36, so I brought home 18. I sent a text to Glen and asked him to count his because we usually miss one or two. We had missed six. We had 42 instead of 36. It is a good thing our trolling motor broke, or we would have been over our limit.

The big girls liked the black emerald shiner. When we caught all those Sandy's, we could see the little shad that they were chasing. BES matches the hatch! Thanks again to Ken Gaby for coming up with that color scheme and especially to Todd & Belinda Box for making them for all of us crappie fisherman!






I was cleaning fish this morning at 7, but it was already hot as ____, and no wind. So, I resorted to having my old man cleaning station... with a fan!! lol Sure did help.
Here's a video of my "old man" cleaning station.

https://youtu.be/RZq0JxCxBu8

Also, love the American Angler electric filet knife. I never though I would spend a hundred bucks for a knife, but so glad I did. Love that sucker.



While we're on the fish cleaning... also love this Game Saver vacuum sealer.
https://youtu.be/UjojbJJxVfw


Good luck out there!

Love dem filets...

Looks like a great day of fishing!

thanks for sharing Tim...enjoyed it.

Yeah, sorry, I forgot to click a few times. I hope it's calm really early like that next weekend because once that wind got going, and with all those boats, it was pretty rough out there!

Nice fish Tim & Glen

Nice haul fellas

Nice haul of crappie there, for sure. I coukd stand some of that.

About 35 years ago we started using grannys "lectric" carving knife to fillet bass from Rayburn and Livingston. Yes, we ate bass back then. We werent worried about leaving them for the water turkeys and gar. We thought we deserved some too.

The blades had rounded tips on the edge and actually worked much better t h an the blabes with sharp tipped edges we are left with nowdays. They glided over the spine without digging in and cutting off the sides of vertebrae and didnt dig in and catch the skin side and cut through. The blades glided twixt meat and skin with enough ease one could fillet a catfish side off the skin.

I reckon now that blades with rounded tips on the edge would be laughed off the market. Wouldnt look mean enough.

Awesome post!

I'm sure we both did... from having too much fun!
good times brutha.

Thanks! and thanks all.

I try to tell a story about the day, rather than just here's a bunch of fish. lol
My hero is Lane Palmer... the ultimate story teller!
Surely he will author some outdoor books some day.

Hard to beat the Black Emerald Shiner, on Fork especially! The crappie fishing world was forever changed with that color combination! Nice fish!

Have that same "old man" fishing station, just need the fan. Nice mess of fish. Just started vacuum sealing my catch. So far I like it. makes for easy packing in the freezer.

Question - is vacuum sealing better than the double ziplock seal bags? I don't own a sealer.

Definitely. It sucks all of the air out, so there's no freezer burn and makes fish last much longer in the freezer (although that's normally not a problem with crappie at my house, ha) plus it makes nice little flat packages that stack easily in the freezer.

Before the vacuum sealer, I used to put them in water and make a fish-cicle until we were ready to thaw and eat. The vacuum sealed is soooo much better. Smaller packages, easier to do, better taste, lasts longer. It's definitely the way to go. Tim has the Mack-daddy $200 one but my $60 food saver brand from Walmart works great too.