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Veterans fishing on Veterans Day Weekend
What a great weekend.
Marine Corp celebrated 241 years of service on Thursday November 10th, Marine Corp birthday. Happy Birthday Marines!
Veterans Day on Friday November 11th. Thanks to all past and present service members. Your sacrifice is truly appreciated!
What better way to celebrate than go fishing with some fellow veterans?
5 of us meet at the ramp to fish out of the Crappie Professors pontoon. 2 Marines (Jimbo and myself), and one US Cost Guard were in the group.
It was dawn and the fog rolling off the lake was backlight by a rising sun.
The water was calm and smooth as glass. Morning air temp was 33 degrees and expected high was 55 under a full sun.
We loaded our gear in the 'toon and launched it. Jimbo (Crappie Professor) has launching that 24' 'toon down to a science.
First stop wasn't very productive, caught a few and moved. Second spot was even less productive. Headed back to the ramp to ensure the truck topper was locked and picked up a propane heater, some of the older gents where having trouble with cold fingers from the minnow bucket.
Third spot was the ticket. We stayed there for over 4 hours and had a ball. We fished with everything, live bait and artificial both produced fish. Charlie Brewer Crappie Sliders were just as productive as live minnows. Impressive to watch. We were slip bobber and jig fishing off the side of the toon. This spot was a nice location. We were just out of the wind (5-10mph), on the edge of a drop off that went from 12' to 25' fishing submerged trees about 15' down.
Things slowed around noon and gave Grover time to fire up the propane grill to make 2 brisket sandwiches for each of us. I have to admit, I had a tough choice to make. Grover walks up to me with a steaming brisket and sticks it out for me to take. One hand I was holding a pole with bobber down and the other was much needed warmth and food. Choices. Hmmm?
I put the sandwich down long enough to land the Crappie. Scarfed down the sandwich, put another minnow on the hook and had another fish-on within a couple of minutes. 15 minutes later the action died again and we ate our 2nd sandwich in Crappie bliss. We all finished up, cleaned up and resumed fishing. Took only a couple of minutes and the action was back hot and furious. I swear crappie loved the flavor of brisket on our bait. We couldn't feed them fast enough, it was awesome. The feed bag was on for both the hunter and hunted.
Time was getting close to end-of-day, we made the decision to try a few other spots before we had to call it a day. 5th and 6th spots were one and done places. 7th and final hole started out slow but picked up momentum the closer it got to dusk. We finally called it when the clicker hit 100 Crappie in the boat. We hung about 30 for some photos on the water before heading back to the ramp. Needless to say, we kept a 5 person limit and had a great Veterans day weekend Crappie fishing with some veterans. As we pulled up to the ramp the super-moon made its appearance. What a beautiful sight as we loaded the boat, unloaded the gear, split the fish, shook hands and parted ways.
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