Report; 5/27/17 (lots of words.....sorry!)

My long time fishing partner, Walt (as well as myself) have been having some medical issues that have prevented us from doing much fishing this spring. Believe me when I tell you that we both are having "withdrawal" symptoms BIG TIME! But hey, like Walt always says, "it could always be worse"!

Anyway, without a boat, decent crappie fishing access from shore around this neck of the woods, is rather limited. Since we had continuous rain these last two day, today was going to be cloudy, but with little chance of rain. So, I put my B n' M 7' SHSS in the car and a few packages of the Johnson crappie plastics (that I just recently won in a contest on here) and I drove around hoping to find a school or two of crappie close to access points.

The water I am forced to fish is either the Oxbow on the Ct. river or a flood control impoundment near my home. Being as today is the start of Memorial Day weekend, there'd be little chance that I'd be able to fish the Oxbow's limited access, without a bunch of people around (which I dislike!). So the impoundment it was.

Arriving at just before 7 am I set up a pink jig head (another item in my recent winnings) and a chartreuse Johnson paddle tail. This is the kind of body with the belly cavity for scent. I filled the cavity with Johnson's pink Scale Scent and commenced to casting. Water temp was 62 degrees. Clarity was less than 3' - for us humans.

When I left my first spot at a bit after 9 am today, I counted a catch & release total of 35 crappie, 2 yellow perch and 2 LM bass; the biggest bass was about 2 1/2 lbs.. Now if you ask Walt, I loose count frequently when we are out fishing together, so there may have been a few more that I missed counted, but as you can see, I had a BLAST of a good time! No giants, but several were very respectable crappie in anyone's playbook. The yellows were small - around 10" or so.

What's interesting and note worthy is that these particular Johnson paddle tails have a long, very thin section of plastic going from the main body to the paddle. What this does is to allow a VERY slow retrieve and plenty of action. Whatever the causal effect, these baits ROCK! I'd make a long cast, count down to the magical no. 7 and start my retrieve. Rarely did the lure get back to me without a crappie or some other fish attached. (Didn't have my camera with me darn it!)

Hopefully, our medical issues will subside soon and we'll both be back out on the water with some decent reports. All in all, it's turning out to be a fine Memorial Day weekend so far! God Bless America!