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Great week at Crappie Masters Grenada
We didn’t have the finish we hoped for but we had a wonderful week. The Crappie Masters National Championship was all it was billed to be. The best of the best were there for the top prize.
Our week started Tuesday morning after an all night drive. We hit the lake with one goal in mind...to do our best. We also wanted to help our sponsors get exposure, and have a great time at the best fishery I’ve ever had the pleasure to fish.
Our main tactic was to pull Pico cranks behind Off Shore planer boards. Millennium Marine Trolling Trees held the rods. We felt many good fish would be traveling with the baitballs in open water and getting our baits away from the boat would help our catch. We started out checking several spots we hoped would hold big fish. Once we located tournament quality crappie,we would pull up and leave that spot for the tournament. One tactical error we probably made was not rechecking each spot on Thursday to assure ourselves the fish stayed there. We thought beating up on the fish would hurt so we didn’t fish many of the spots again until the tournament.
We fished river bends and ledges, points, timbered areas with good defined channels, and some flats next to deep water. We had our share of mishaps with the boards in tight quarters in timber and hard bends along ledges but felt we would play our cards for our best hand.
Wednesday night we had a wonderful meal at the welcome event. Let me say this first and foremost: the citizens of Grenada,MS are the nicest and most welcoming folks both Justin and I have ever met in a fishing community. From the folks in bait shops, restaurants, stores,and those Crappie.com members from that area, each and every one bent over backwards to help us.
By Thursday we had sore arms and backs from reeling in crappie that were mind-numbing in both size and numbers. We spent that afternoon and night respooling reels, organizing tackle (totally out of character for me), and stocking the boat with junk food and drinks. We slept good but hit the floor running at 5am Friday morning.
We started out on a river channel that has several bends along a shallower ledge. Justin had 4 keepers in the boat before I had a sniff. He broke his personal best crappie twice Friday. We only had to fish a couple of our chosen spots to get a 7 fish limit the weighed in at 14.09 pounds and big fish of 2.55 pounds. All of our fish came on Pico INT cranks and a custom c55 I had pulled out of retirement. Off Shore OR12 boards with tattle flags ran interference for the cranks.
I don’t think either of us ever really dreamed of being in 13th place out of 145 teams after day one. We hoped the number 13 would be lucky for us as we both downed a Cobb Salad at Zaxby’s then got back to our cabin at Hugh White State Park to get the boat and equipment ready for day 2.
Saturday found us at our best day one spot but conditions were very different. A hard SW wind had the open water area whipped up pretty bad. My Excel Bay Pro 230 was up to the task but the rough water gave us fits with boat control and trying to keep the lines and planer boards from getting together in monumental tangles. We probably cut 1000 yards of line off the Shakespeare ATS reels on Saturday alone.
The river bends area only gave up small keepers that we knew wouldn’t help us get back to our day one weight. We headed to an area we hadn’t fished since Tuesday. As we got to the series of flats near deep water, we hit schools of 1 1/4 pound crappie. It was one after another, same general size that weren’t adding weight to our limit. We made the fateful decision to leave that area for one that we hoped held bigger fish. As luck would have it, a boat that was fishing the area we left that was pulling cranks behind Off Shore boards, ended up tallying almost 15 pounds after they sorted thru almost 100 crappie they caught in that small area.
All the spots we fished for the remainder of the day produced the size fish we already had in the box. We got so frustrated trying to keep the boards untangled, we ended up pulling cranks our normal way the last 1/2 of the day.
We knew we had lost out on a wonderful opportunity to place very high. Our weight of 9.94 dropped us to 42nd place. Respectable but not where we wanted to be.
The winning teams all used Livescope technology and literally chased individual fish all over the area they fished until they got the fish to bite. That is a technique that is winning tournaments but has little appeal to me. That’s an argument for another time.
We left Grenada with our heads up, proud of the wonderful week of fishing and our finish in just my 4th crappie tournament.
I want to publicly thank Justin(Finiman) for being such a true friend and great partner. Justin hired me 2 years ago to teach him how to pull cranks and longline. I guess I did a decent job.
I also want to thank my sponsors:
Excel Boats
Off Shore Tackle
Pico Lures
Millennium Marine
Humminbird
MinnKota
Southern Crappie Rods
Podunk Ideas
Cornfield Crappie Gear
Precision Sonar
It was a week I’ll never forget. I want to thank all the members here for the encouragement. Y’all are the best of the best fishing site on the net.
Doug
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