Back in the Saddle

So, after many years of not being able to fish my favorite little fishing hot spot in Northern Wisconsin, I finally was able to go. Some of you may know that I sold BMW cars for a living for the last five Spring seasons. And in the car business, Saturdays is your money day. If you're not there selling cars on Saturday, you're not selling cars. I have a new found respect for those in retail, and especially those that have to work weekends with only a day off here and there. Essentially, by not having two days off in a row, you have no life. You end up just catching up with what needs to be done, and you can't plan any weekends or any long weekends, without the fear of loosing part of your income. But, I don't regret one day that I sold Bimmers. I am still an old BMW nut, in both respects. I'm old, and I like old BMWs! lol
I met a lot of great people, and it was fun spreading my enthusiasm for the cars. BMW is a good brand for car enthusiasts, they have a good following. And heck, I know I've mentioned this before, but they build and export more vehicles from the USA than any other manufacturer, domestic or foreign.


OK, back to fishing. So I went up North with my fishing partner Tom to hit our favorite little lake. It's a small lake, maybe 60-70 acres in size. We don't fish it with any electronics or even a motor. We go "green", with a small row boat, that we simply row around the lake in. Really Tom does all the rowing and I do the casting off the front till Tom hits the Crappie, then I switch to a Crappie jig. Here's how we do it: Tom hangs a jig about a foot under a pencil bobber. The 1/32 oz jig does not weight enough to keep the bobber vertical, so it floats there horizontally, one rod on each side of the back of the boat, back about 15 ft, while Tom rows. He rows slowly in and out of the Cabbage weeds, which are about a foot under the water still. The water is clear, and is about 4-6 feet deep. Since Tom is using short rods that are laying down on the side of him, no rod holders, he's got the back of the boat covered. I'm fishing in front, and since I traditionally only used a short 5-6 ft rod, I could not troll at the same time for fear of tangling lines while he weaved in and out of the weeds. I would cast a floating jointed Rapala, out front and to the side of the boat, catching Northern Pike and Bass, while he focused on finding the Crappie. Once he found Crappie, I switched and tossed a jig to cash in.
This trip was a little different. Since I had recently toured the South, Spider Rig fishing with 10-16 ft rods, with some of our crappie.com friends, I became comfortable with those long rods. Up North here we really never used long rods like that for Crappie fishing. One reason might be that we can only use 2 rods and we did not need as much separation. Anyway, here fishing ion this row boat with Tom, I figured I need some "separation". I brought a 12 ft BnM rod, and hung it off the side of the boat, with a bobber and jig just like Tom had off the back of the boat.
This addition to our old technique turned out great. We only fished two hours, and we caught probably 40 fish. Only about 10 keeper Crappie and Blugill, but 30 fish none the less. At times it felt like a three ring circus out there. I would catch a Bass while casting, Tom jumping to set the hook on a Crappie, the wind blowing us into the lilly pads, it was crazy, crazy fun. Weird thing this year was, I caught multiple Bluegill, Bass and Crappie on a large jointed Rapala, and Northern Pike. This was out of character for this lake, but it was fine by me. I could not believe the Crappie and Bluegill were hitting this big thing.