I've been dinking around lately

After getting back from graduating my niece last weekend and working out my week, Tuesday evening I went out check if the crappies had taken up one of their summer haunts for about an hour. I had to really work at just picking up 5 average sized ones. They all came from edge of visibility jigging, which at that dock was down some 8 feet below the surface as clear as the water was. Real slow.

Got a hold of my fishing partner and then last evening we went looking for the 10" perch he was all excited about finding in a pond near his house. That guy is something else, excited about 10" perch after landing a 37" pike Monday. One of his other fishing pals casts shorelines for bass, and he took my partner under his wing. Both guys are fun to fish with. Real passion for the sport. None of the three of us harvest city fish.

We found a few in the pond, that we keep an eye on since it produced some 14" crappies a few years back. It tends to winter kill and we have not seen any crappies since, but it is a relatively peaceful place to fish. Last evening besides the three or four good perch it also produced really fat pumpkinseeds to maybe 6 or 7 inches and a couple of the round green sunfish to about 8". Nothing real fast and all fish were shallow, very shallow some in as little as about a foot of water. There were also the inevitable bullheads none of which were bigger than flathead bait size, and some smaller sunfish and one barbelless carp, probably wild strain goldfish which have reverted to carp appearance, but are not true carp. The types of sizes were about what one would expect from a pond that may or may not winterkill depending on the season, all except the yellow perch which normally don't begin to make 10" here in the Cities. The pond was heavily colored as opposed to the clarity of the lake I was on Tuesday.

A bit on the round green sunfish. We seem to have two forms of them here in the Twin Cities, a more normal long greenie and in some waters a bluegill shaped version, both of them thick fish.

We enjoy dink fishing from time to time. It is both relaxing and informative about what it takes to make the larger sizes and at times produces some real surprises, also informative, like finding the two forms of greenies and the "little carps" which never get over a couple of pounds but fight as hard for their size as the true carps do. Carps of all kinds occasionally take the little plastics and anymore I check all of them for the presence or absence of the barbels. Those without come from a different type of carp, one that like goldfish goes completely dormant as winter temps get down to cold enough to form ice, and then use no oxygen until ice out opens and warms the waters enough to reactivate them. They are actually farmed that way in some parts of Europe and Asia if I remember my reading correctly, and are supposed to be better eating than the larger true carps, although I can't vouch for that. They, along with the bullheads and the green sunfish, are very often present where other fish including the true carps cannot survive the winter.

All fish this week were taken on plastic tails. My most productive was an inch and a quarter pearl luv nub on a 48th oz jig head with a size 8 hook mostly jigged vertically with some very slow lateral leading of the line. The perch also took a BG Baby Shad also in pearl both jigged and cast, but the crappies and sunnies didn't respond to cast baits at all.

It is very enjoyable to fish with someone who likes so many different kinds of fishing as my partner does. Crappies are our main target, but variety is the spice of life or so they say.