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Arkansas Crappie Trek Part I
This is the first installment of the ACT saga. It's been an interesting trip so far and I have attempted to document some of the trip with pictures. On Friday morning we sat out for Beaver Lake in spite of the hail storm that had arrived just prior to day light. The boat was ready...
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However the preparation of the travelers was of utmost importance. Nothing gets a person in the mood for a hard days travel more than a good breakfast from Omlet Express in Jonesboro. This relatively unknown breakfast spot which double as Blue Coast Burrito from lunch till close serves up some mean breakfast vittles at a bargain price. Knowing this we put the peddle to the metal and headed out to get our tanks full.
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A quick stop at Paragould for some minners and we were on our way.
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What about the fishing???
I'm glad you asked about the fishing.
Our first trip was destined to short since we had a wedding to attend midday. Not knowing where to even start and being the skillful and resourceful fisherman that I am, I researched my available resources and found that the cove that the back porch overlooked was called Crappie Cove. What luck...we drive across the state and drive miles on a one lane track to a cabin in the woods and find ourselves on the banks of CRAPPIE COVE. There was no doubt where I would be fishing. The next day found us making a circle in CRAPPIE COVE with both sonars running and the front and rear sonar analysts interpretting the dots and squiggles on the screens into fish catching information. One pass was enough. We found CRAPPIE on the sonar stacked up in 30 fow about 12-15 feet down. We immediately began to unlimber the 8 B&M BJGPs and other miscellaneous fishing utensils to assualt these crappie stacked up in the Cedars. Our plan of attack was a frontal assault using the spider rig. We had already decided to take no prisoners so it was war. Only there was one small problem...
Spider rigging in them daggum cedars just don't work out so good. After a zillion and one hang ups we abandon the spider rig and attack with single jigs on 12'B&Ms. The crappie stacked up was clearly a clever ruse to discourage the average fisherman. They had apparently positioned leaves and other debris to appear on sonar as crappie stacked up while they had undoubtely departed for carp cove where they could eat in peace and not be disturbed by crappie fishermen.
It wasn't long though, before Carol was hollering get the net I looked up and the B&M was bent in the approximate shape of a pretzel that someone had taken a bite out of. I answered her with the worst words a woman could hear in that situation....WHAT NET?...the fish turned out to be a 4lb 14 oz deformed catfish (had a 3rd fin on the tail like a gold fish) which she made me lip since we had no net. Do you know what liping a catfish does to a thumb. It just ain't pretty...Attachment 86526
What's up with the goofy tail? We released that one to fight again. Carols second hook up was on a we don't know what since it towed the boat out of the cedars around a circle in the cove and back into the Cedars where it wrapped up and came off. It was a good thing cause I was sure dreading sticking my hand into the mouth of what ever it was...
Gotta run. More to follow soon. Good to see ya'll today Nimrod and Xring.