I’m out here with a good friend Qaiyim Raheem and we were doing our pre-spring Crappie Fishing. The great thing about Crappie Fishing is that you can do it from the bank with a bobber, hook and a minnow. In other words, anybody can do this on a shoe string budget. Any person can Crappie fish year round but early spring usually brings in the 1st Crappie yearling that normally goes to shallow waters or banks to spawn. The peak of Crappie season is at the end of April and the 1st and 2nd weeks of May. You will find a lot of people who will hunt spring turkey in the morning and fish Crappie in the afternoon; this is done quite a bit at many area lakes. We happen to be fishing at Truman Lake in the Lake of the Ozarks near Kansas City. I will be getting ready for a Crappie tournament that I will be co-hosting and filming in the first week of May. There are a lot of lakes around here that people can Crappie fish. One of the best is Lake Jacomo, but Longview has some good fishing too. There is also Wyandotte Lake, Smithville lake and let’s not forget the lake at James A. Reed.
One of my favorite tips for catching Crappie is to wait until that windy day when the temperature is in the mid 50’s or low 60’s. A lot of anglers get frustrated by the wind, but I have found Crappie bite better on those kind of days for me. The trick is to fish with the wind to your back at a 45 degree angle. The wind makes Crappie vulnerable and they pocket up. The minnows follow plankton and a sweet spot is created due to the feeding frenzy. Another thing to be on the look out for is for shad flopping out of the water that also means the fish are feeding. So with that in mind we fished near some brush off the bank, and we used some bobbers and minnows. Later we decided to go out on the boat. This is where we used some jigs and fished around a lot of stumps. Here is where we hit the mother load and caught several big slab Crappies. We hit our limit of fish, we were happy and it ended up being a great day. We headed home so we could cook up our fresh fish, and there’s nothing like fresh cooked Crappie. Walleyed along with Crappie is considered gourmet or pan fish. It is real good eating. This fish fries up well with an egg or cornmeal batter. My friend Qaiyim sometimes uses cream of wheat and agro seasoned with paprika, salt, onion powder and a pinch of cayenne. He swears by this recipe, and always says, “don’t forget the hot sauce.” I promised that I would try it out soon. The other good thing is that Crappie freezes up well, so what you don’t cook, you can put away in the freezer for later. All in all, it was all good. If you are doing some crappie fishing this spring or whatever is your favorite regional fishing, email us at uaotv@aol.com. Just don’t forget to go on out have some fun, take the kids and their cane pole and do it Urban American Style!
