Thread: Monster SLAB in the Scenic City

On Monday I had the pleasure of guiding Bart Volpintesta and his youngsters, Sam & Max.

Talk about starting out with a BANG! I was giving them my standard instructions on how we troll for crappie, and had cast one line into the water. Within 30 secs., before I could even cast a 2nd line out, I saw rod one jump. I told Sam, "Why don't you grab that rod and reel that fish in."

I went about my work preparing other rods when I realized Sam was making no headway on the fish, in fact we had significant drag slippage. I checked the drag and it was fine. I told Sam to slow down and "play the fish," which I assumed was a catfish... and I told them so.

When he finally got the fish close to the boat and it surfaced, you could have knocked me down with a feather. Just like a novice angler I screamed, "Get the net!"

It was the biggest crappie to grace my boat in two or three years at least. We carried it to Hamilton's Bait Shop later and at 2 lbs. 3 oz., it holds the lead in their annual March Big Crappie Contest. I'm not sure if it will hold up or not, but I'm proud to have had one of my clients on the leaderboard.

I probably scurried around the lake too much looking for a hotspot, and Sam wanted to take some time out to catch his personal best catfish. Here's the video: https://youtu.be/FkV3E7WUXjE But they left the water with 24 crappie for the freezer, along with two TARPs, including the beast!

Life is good and gettin' better every day.

That's awesome