Since Slab posted about his best trip, I thought maybe we could all post ours. Not bass, not walleye, not off-shore. Your best crappie trip.

I have several that are more memorable with my late Father, but my absolute best trip was one we didn’t keep a single crappie to dress unless they were fatally hooked.

Justin Elder and I qualified for the Crappie Master’s Nat Championship on Grenada in 2019. In our 2nd tournament together we had finished 5th in the Crappie Master’s Rend Lake qualifier. First time I had ever fished Rend.

It was Sept but still hot as blue blazes. We decided before hand, since neither of us were then accomplished on Livescope, to pull Pico and other crankbaits behind Off-Shore planer boards.

Three days of practice found us fishing all over the lake but with 3-4 spots we felt comfortable we could catch tournament quality fish. Neither of us had any dreams of winning, we just didn’t want to be embarrassed in front of the world’s best.

We caught and released more 2 pound crappie than most would catch in a year in practice.

Our first day of the 2 day event found us in our best spot and luckily we only left it to try our best fall-back spot for a short time. Justin caught our best, a 2.55, during the heat of the day along a river bend. We threw back lots of 1.75s that couldn’t help us cull out. We weighed 14.09 pounds for 7 fish that put us at 13th I think.

The next day, before starting time, saw us looking at a red sky. I’m a firm believer in red sky at morning-sailor takes warning. Wind had been our friend all week. It kicked our butts that day. There was zero chance we could fish our spot from day one for more than an hour or so. We did get our 7 keepers there but nowhere near the weight we needed.

Our first back-up spot was even worse so we headed to #3. We caught one after another 1.25+ that didn’t help us. Another tournament boat was in that spot and we didn’t want to crowd them so we headed to #4. It was covered with weekend types wanting to get out of the wind and there was no way we could fish our planer board spread in a crowd.

We finished with just over 10 pounds, good for 40th place. We were out of the money but not embarrassed. We saw at that tournament that if you weren’t using Livescope, you aren’t going to draw a check in many tourneys.

We left with our heads up knowing we both had caught more BIG crappie that week than ever before. It could pain many to throw back as many 13-14 inch crappie as we did. I wish I had kept count. It was an amazing 5 days with a great Buddy.