Feeding The Hungry

I was crappie fishing a place called Binders Lake yesterday. Caught 6 keepers ranging from 10 to 12 inches, tossed back about 30 small crappie around hand sized.

Went to leave and figured I would give it a couple more casts off a low water bridge on the way out (because you know, it's ALWAYS one more cast). There was a family containing a father,mother and young son fishing off to the side.

I asked them if they cleaned them all out? The father told me that they had been there for an hour and hadn't caught anything. I told him where I was catching them, what I was catching them on and how many I tossed back.

His eyes bugged out and said he would have kept anything I tossed back, even the perch. He went on to tell me he hadn't worked for over 3 weeks and that he refused to go on food stamps if he could hunt it or fish it, but it obviously wasn't working out to well in his favor.

I had to offer the crappie I had 3 times before he finally took them, after convincing him it wasn't so much charity as I didn't feel like cleaning a hand full of crappie. The small sons eyes lit up and he said " we eatin fish tonight daddy?" Dad says "hell yeah!" Mother popped off and said "better than ramen noodles". Gave me a bit of a chuckle and sympathy both.