These lines highlight the importance of personal freedom and refusal to follow the crowd. From my experience, I believe there are many applications in business and investing for which this advice holds true, and it works for fihing, as well. Use of extreme ultralight tackle—unusually light line, long rod, and minute bait—gives an angler flet tackle saved the day.
Scenario #1 Shallow Water
Location: Midwestern natural lake
Date: April 26 and 27, 2008
Conditions: Water 48°F in main lake, warmer in backwaters
A cold spring with constant cold fronts and north winds has crappies in a funk, with main-lake fish acting as if it’s still late March. A couple of sunny days warms shallow backwaters into the upper 50°F range in the afternoon. Following a scenario detailed in the chapter, “Year of the Crappie” in In-Fisherman’s Critical Concepts Crappie Location book, hundreds of black crappie enter muck-bottomed backwaters that offer warmer conditions.
While great in number, these fish prove incredibly spooky in the snag-filled bays just 1 to 2 feet deep. The mere splash of a mini-float or an overhead shadow sends crappies scurrying. The water is too shallow for conventional lure casting and they refuse any form of artificial bait. Even medium-sized crappie minnows are ignored. The smallest minnow is all they seem ready to handle.
Solution: Cast a small (one inch or less) minnow on 2-pound-test line with a #6 light-wire crappie hook 10 to 15 yards with no bobber or weight, so it lands with the splash of a raindrop. A 1-weight 7-foot flyrod blank converted to a spinning rod provides adequate load, torque, and leverage to propel the nearly weightless offering the necessary distance, even into a swirling wind.
The simple rig allows the minnow to freely roam the shallows in a natural manner, triggering bites from formerly negative fish on nearly every cast. Numerous large bluegills are caught in the same backwaters on a 1/80-ounce natural-glow color pin min tipped with mealworms, fished with no additional weight or float.
Scenario #2 Deep Water
Location: Midwestern natural lake
Date: November 21, 2007
Conditions: Cloudy & breezy, water 49°F
It’s the day before Thanksgiving, hardly a peak panfish period in the Midwest, and the wind blows hard amid rain that turns to snow late in the day. The evening forecast calls for the first significant snowfall of the year. No wonder I’m alone on the lake.
A search of two key main-lake breaklines that have been producing fish for over a month yields only a couple and the graph is bare. It seems that the fish have once again read Critical Concepts Crappie Location and realized that with deteriorating weather, it’s time to migrate to the stable environment of the main-lake basin.
A search in 25 feet reveals large humps that at first glance could be treetops or snags. But experience tells me they’re fish. Their feeding attitude proves anything but positive, however. Once again, a tiny minnow seems the only accepted offering and the dilemma is how to present it in deep water to trigger bites.
Solution: A sift through the minnow bucket yields enough pin minnows. I backtroll a deepwater finesse double-dropper rig with a 36-inch fluorocarbon leader and a 3/8-ounce weight into the wind, trying to maintain a 15-degree line angle. A Glow Pearl Fly, tied on a #6 red fine wire hook, attracts more active fish from the vast school. “Strikes” are nothing more than a slight change in the bend of my 12-foot quiver-tip rod. One-pound-test FireLine (diameter of 1/4-pound test monofilament) enhances strike detection.
The Rod Dilemma
Finding extreme ultralight rods has been the biggest challenge. There seems to be limited demand for them, particularly those over 7 feet. Yet shorter rods can’t make the long casts with microlight lures or baits that often are required. I concede that it’s not always necessary to go to such lengths to catch panfish; but to me, this type of rod is more than a tool.
Longer rods, simply, are more fun. When I panfish like this, I become a kid again. When I take a friend fishing, I explain that my one rule is to approach the day as if we’re both 12 years old. Fishing “the Stradivarius,” an affectionate name for my favorite custom rod, was incredible fun and helped me become that kid I wanted to be again.
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