A rare serious question

I have a serious question. I was asked why I crappie fish instead of bass fish. I first thought, cause I don't want to be one of those guys, "bass fishermen" but I knew the person asking was looking for a serious answer.. So best I could come up with is crappie fishing is what my dad taught me to love and I like to eat them.. So what is it that makes people crappie fishermen?? Instead of bass?
So if you are talking to the corporate type that has never crappie fished and they ask you Why do you crappie fish instead of other species? What is better about crappie fishing?
I think there may be a comparison here of Duck hunting compared to deer hunting? Duck hunting being bass fishing and deer hunting being crappie fishing..
Not sure but would like to hear some serious opinions from you guys.

It is more fun.

For me....its just more challengeing and you also catch something thats good to eat.

Crappie fishin is easier,you let me catch a 2lb or over bass it gonna get eaten along with some crappie.

I don't like the taste of green carp.

A lot of people say crappie fishing is easier.. Crappie easier to catch?

not as much pressure , dont have to compete to fish the same hot spot and have some guy say that is his spot leave, well not as often, less cost in most gear, great people who are willing to share good spots, get to travel and have good food and get a little knowledge of where and how to fish the state your in,,,, wonder how many bass camps they have and share there spots to an out of towner,,,, just easier on the brain

I have to side with G,its more of a challenge I think and I love to eat em.

Lot less hype and I eat crappie not green carp. Crappie fishing is an art and the ones that do it 12 months out if the year have always had my respect. This is my first year fishing for crappie other than spring time and I have loved it

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I use to be a serious tournament bass fisherman and bass clubber on the local level. Won a lot of local bass tourneys and was bass club champ for a number of years. Thought there was only one fish in the water, bass. Got older and became burned out on tournaments etc., to do tournament, bass or crappie, fishing right you have to invest a lot of on-water time and money. Joined the MCC club back when it was the Mid South Crappie Club and won a couple when they came to Okatibbee but never one else where. Soon found out it was about like bass tourneys except the folks seemed a little less cut-throat, more friendly but still they were hard core. This was along when I was retiring and so money became a problem as most of the tournaments were across the state. So I gave that up to and now just fish for fun and food. Crappie fishing is much more laid back and is easier in my way of thinking. I use to think no body except myself knew how to run the boat/troll motor but myself but that has changed also. Now I just sit back, change hats for WB and let Scott do most of the work, am really enjoying my fishing a lot more now since I met Scott. So to me it comes down to easier more laid back fishing, not that it is not hard to pattern crappie at time too. Sorry for the book.

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Originally Posted by majflyboy

I don't like the taste of green carp.

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Tommy go above the lower head dam and catch some fast water spots, they taste great.

Thanks SteveJ for the insight I can use. So crappie fishermen as a whole are more laid back casual, recreational fishermen that do not crave the intense competition of competitive bass fishing?
How much does the fact that crappie are great to eat have to do with them being your fish of choice? For me maybe as much as 50%..
So what percentage of the crappie you catch do you and your family eat?

I never keep crappie unless someone ask me to. I would rather put them back for another day. I have often said that crappie fishermen are normally bad conservationest because they keep everything they catch. How many fish can 1 family eat? If I want to eat crappie, I will go to the lake and catch 6-8 and then fish for the fun of it. I have seen folks catch their limit 2-3 times a day. Save some for the next fellow.

Im not really sure how to answer this.....I bass fished strictly for fun for a number of years. Didnt seem to be much to it. I took up serions crappie fishing about 10 or so years ago and found the patterning of them to be much more challenging than bass. Once I find a solid pattern, I get more satisfaction from solving the puzzle. Plus bass smell bad!

I think you have to have ADHD to be a bass fisherman. Ain't smart enough to be a bass fisherman.

I think they are a lot harder to catch and find . It is like hunting fish . There is nothing like finding them and the thump . Cause one day they are here and the next day they are not around anywhere . You have to hunt them all over again . It is always a challenge . And it is in us to take the challenge . Man you just gotta love it

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Originally Posted by CRAPPIEHUNTER68

Thanks SteveJ for the insight I can use. So crappie fishermen as a whole are more laid back casual, recreational fishermen that do not crave the intense competition of competitive bass fishing?
How much does the fact that crappie are great to eat have to do with them being your fish of choice? For me maybe as much as 50%..
So what percentage of the crappie you catch do you and your family eat?

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Well we keep quite a few as I have 3 daughters w/ families, 2 grand-daughter w/ families and my gas man (he brings me watermelons too) that like fish. So I keep some pkgs of frozen fish but Carol and I don't eat frozen fish so when she tells me she's ready I keep a mess for us. She only likes them fried. Eating really has nothing to do with me fishing for crappie tho other than bluegills it is the only fish Carol will eat. It is just more mellow for me. Now crappie fisherfolks being more laid back is just MHO, tho those tournament crappie folk are not too laid back. I was mainly speaking of recreational folk. Again this is just me, I'm sure others on here have different opinions.

I got kicked out of bass fishing. They were all jealous of my good looks and movie star hair.

Wannabe...

Until I moved to the Barnett Reservoir area in 1985, I really wasn't a serious fisherman at all. I preferred to duck or deer hunt with an occasional trip to SD or TX for some bird shooting. After meeting several folks that lived in my condo complex that crappie fished, I was hooked. I started out fishing up and down the causeway like other folks and then a friend of mine asked me to fish in a Mid-South Crappie tournament. We won big fish that day and the rest is history. Crappie are the easiest fish to catch and the hardest fish to figure out. Here today, gone tomorrow. I played golf for many, many years and thought about chasing the pro player dream and might have made it. The point here is the people. The people that play golf for a living are good folks that come from well-to-do families and want everybody to know it. Crappie fishermen for the most part are darn good, hard working folks that like to have a good time and catch fish. In crappie fishing tournaments, I have met multi-millionaires, business owners, good folks, crooks and everything in between. But the bottom line is that they all like good, clean tournament compitition.

I agree with biggerjigger i used to fish several bass tourneys a year and only crappie fished in the spring. It is much more rewarding to myself to go to the lake and figure a pattern out. It seems to me that crappie are harder to pattern and weather effects them alot more than bass making them harder to catch at times.

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Originally Posted by crappiholic

compitition.

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And besides, Bass fishermen are real sticklers for spelling. Who needs that stress?

Wannabe...

Crappie fishing is more of a challenge, duck hunting is being able to make a duck do what I want it to do. Then make the dog do the same

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I find this all quite interesting. As suspected a very diverse group.
I keep way less than 1/2 the crappie I catch and never a trophy fish. On Columbus if it is 1.75 it goes back if Grenada 2.25 it goes back if Pickwick 2 pounds etc. etc. I hardly ever have crappie in my freezer.. Creates a bit of a tournament feel when I tell the wife I will be fishing in the morning and we will be eating crappie in the evening. Try that on certain days in Dec. or maybe Aug. On those days I am very proud of my 6 crappie in the 10 to 11 inch range that took all day to catch. Have an outdoor writer show up and you need to catch just a few on command.. Take your biggest customer on a crappie trip.. Take your 3 year old and watch them look at you waiting on you to catch one... Those are the situations I love. Along with picking a lake I have never been to.. study a map.. Go fish and catch even a few..
Really though, I could do all those same things BASS fishing..
I am beginning to think it is really the fact that the crappie numbers are much higher making catching more frequent but more than anything it is the company kept, as a whole you crappie guys are just more my kind of people. Could it really be that we chose the species by the group of fishermen we wish to represent ourselves with? Or maybe the group we feel we best fit in?
Just a thought.. You guys gave me the thought..

I think I just figured out why Is likes being married to me.

Wannabe...

I'm prob off in my interpretation bc I'm a single pole guy but when I used to fish local bass tourneys out of my buddies boat you were constantly running and gunning. And if you weren't, you were fishing an area rather than a "spot". And while you're fishing that "area" you're working. Just never got that relaxing feeling I get now.
Plus im not competitive and dont get along good with overly competitive people. Most bass fisherman I know or have met have been that way and are constantly in search of the next trophy fish to mount. I'd rather scratch a location off my dream list of places to fish.
Plus it's child oriented. There's nothing greater than sitting over a tree in deep water watching my son pull up one fish after another with myself rarely having to do anything other than take pictures.
Plus I fell in love with tying jigs and they are, for the most part, productive year round. I can afford to make them and are relatively easy for a simple mind such as mine.
Plus sacalait just taste that much better.
Plus winter fishing can be good in bayous n creeks, which is nice for ittle bitty boats like mine.
Etc etc

Adam

And it really explains why she keeps blowing that whistle too.

Wannabe...

OK OK...since it's a serious question:

I've bass fished since I was in diapers. My Dad was a Bass fishermen when there weren't any. I can remember the house I grew up in had a payment of $68 per month and my Dad had 4 Abu Garcia's that cost $30 each. LOL. My Great Uncle that lived next door was a bass fishermen before they invented Bass Fishermen before that too. Anyway, I got the bug from them both. Chased 'em up until I went off to school with seriousness only detracted by Deer Hunting. Anyway, my outdoor time slowed as school, started dating Is...got married moved to Jackson. 3 or 4 years later, bought a boat and started gearing back up for Bass. Moved back home and the Bass population was on a down swing on Grenada. I kept on chasing them, but started fishing smaller waters too. This culminated on a January day in the mouth of The Main Marina...I asked a game warden why the Bass had been so hard to catch in the last 2 or 3 years and particularly this year. He told me that he shocked all the lakes for MDWFP and said that on a typical day, he normally shocks up 30 bass an hour. That two years ago, he'd shocked up 30 a day and that that very day, he'd been shocking for 8 hours and hadn't shocked up a single bass. It's simple he said, there are no Bass in Grenada. And he was right. I thought about it and of all the trips I'd had on Grenada in the previous year....I'd boated very very few. (As a side note, the next year, there was a fantastic spawn and the Bass have made a huge comback. Right now, IMO, Grenada is probably the second best LMB fishery in MS). Anyhow, that was January....I picked up a jig pole and started in on it. Sometime around then I found C.C looking for info....the rest is history. I haven't thrown a Carolina Rig, Buzzbait or Senko in anger in 4 years now, I think it is.

Wannabe...

I've never had bass stack up like sacs. They may be more in population but I thinks it's more of how they school and bunch. They are more like speckled trout with bass being more like redfish. Even their feeding preferences or differences are similar now that I think about it.

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Originally Posted by SteveJ

I use to be a serious tournament bass fisherman and bass clubber on the local level. Won a lot of local bass tourneys and was bass club champ for a number of years. Thought there was only one fish in the water, bass. Got older and became burned out on tournaments etc., to do tournament, bass or crappie, fishing right you have to invest a lot of on-water time and money. Joined the MCC club back when it was the Mid South Crappie Club and won a couple when they came to Okatibbee but never one else where. Soon found out it was about like bass tourneys except the folks seemed a little less cut-throat, more friendly but still they were hard core. This was along when I was retiring and so money became a problem as most of the tournaments were across the state. So I gave that up to and now just fish for fun and food. Crappie fishing is much more laid back and is easier in my way of thinking. I use to think no body except myself knew how to run the boat/troll motor but myself but that has changed also. Now I just sit back, change hats for WB and let Scott do most of the work, am really enjoying my fishing a lot more now since I met Scott. So to me it comes down to easier more laid back fishing, not that it is not hard to pattern crappie at time too. Sorry for the book.

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Scott will spoil you for sure.

I also have fished my fair share of bass tourneys. That was before my 4 daughters came into this world. All 4 of them love to eat crappie. We have it at least once a month year round. I fry up about 44 fillets for the 6 of us every time we eat fish. I also don't crappie fish in july or august. So I have to keep the freezer pretty well stocked in order to keep up this routine. No I don't keep crappie under 9.5" LOL. I tried to eat green carp once when I was younger and I will never make that mistake again. My fondest memories as a child was when my dad would take me crappie fishing. It's in my blood and as long as my girls keep asking me to fry up some crappie. I will continue with this passion that I have for crappie fishing.

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Originally Posted by Wannabe...

I haven't thrown a Carolina Rig, Buzzbait or Senko in anger in 4 years now, I think it is.

Wannabe...

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Uh hum..... I beg to differ
http://www.crappie.com/crappie/off-t...years-now.html

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Originally Posted by emptystringer

uh hum..... I beg to differ
http://www.crappie.com/crappie/off-t...years-now.html

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busted!!!!DohRofl