Time again for my annual fishing report. Been a weird year with a late spring for us and cool water temps. But hey, work sucks and I hate mowing the grass so we’re fishing.

An unusually cold week in February killed a bunch of our shad making bait tough to come by. We have a pond that’s plumb full of little 3” perch though so plan B isn’t a problem. Been catching a few catfish and the bite is getting better every day. Nothing big yet but the big girls have to eat and they’ll be going into overdrive soon in preparation for the spawn.

The trolling is a conflict for me, the boy loves to ride in the boat and run the motor but it coincides with the best catfishing. The best plan is to troll when it’s nice and catfish when it’s blowing. Or on weekends troll early, nap, and catfish until 1am or so. Hard to pass up a bucketful of saugeye, not much that swims in freshwater that’s better tablefare. We killed it last night dragging plugs, a bunch of nice eyes plus a bonus of decent crappie and a couple big sandies.

More to come....

Good times making memories.

Love it Mate !!!

That young man is loving life!

that whipper snapper needs come fish the salt someday.

Nothing better for little kids then fishing, they don't have to freaking be big ones >they just have to get them some ...then you're hooked for life !

Last nights haul. Ole Dad was cleaning and bagging fish until past bedtime, 4:45 came early today.
For the electric knife naysayers


A few incidentals. Never know what you might drag up out there.
Funny looking little flathead.

This is the truth as far as I can see. I’ve never taken a kid fishing that didn’t end up having fun.

Someday Roger. Boy wants to go back to Alaska, he was born there but we left when he was 11 months old. Plan is when he’s 10 or 12 we’ll do a cast and blast bear and fish trip. Of course I’ve never fished the gulf and would like to so we might have to go down there in the meantime.

Pretty good haul. 👍😎

NICE!

Lol, I used to hold my Dads Salmon poles just like that when I was his size.

Nice sandy. Trolling, throwing crank baits?

We drag mainly Berkeley Flicker shad jointed cranks, a few Shadraps, and DT10s. Pull them about as slow as our 20hp Zuki will go.

flicker shads work great for sandies, smallmouth trolled. I use lead core line. Thanks

Great pics!

Thanks for sharing.

Really cool pics!

Was just about to ask what you like pulling !

Thanks.

What depth you getting them in ?

Great Catch, little man getting big!

Those are some great, lifetime memory pictures. Wish I had some pics of myself when I was about that age in my grandfathers aluminum boat. But back in the 1950's folks like him didn't lug around cameras except on holidays & special events.

Looks like a great time. I especially like those fat walleyes.

My brother in law up in the north country uses leadcore for summer time walleye when they’re staying deep. Up there the Salmo Hornet is the darling nowadays but I break off so many fishing trees and rock piles that I can’t stomach the $8 a piece price tag. I get the flicker shad when scheels runs their spring sales.

We target them when they move into the shallow flats during the spring. From now until August they can usually be found in 8 to 12 feet of water. Really the only place on our home lake that is much deeper than that is the old creek channels. The channels are up to 40’ deep but only about 30’ wide. The hot spots are old ditches and stuff like that from the roads and little community that is now under the lake. Drag them across the ditch that’s 14’ in 9’ of water and as soon as they come across the cut hang on!

Nice always look forward to you and the little mans pics and updates. 👍

Me and Momma snuck off for an hour and went to the crappie hole a couple weeks ago. I had illusions of other activities but the crappie bite was smoking hot and the poison ivy was thick so we just fished. Caught right at 50 in an hour including three monsters that she caught. The big one was 17 1/4” and a hair over 3lb. About 15 minutes after this pic him and 18 of his friends were released into 350F peanut oil. A few cold ones and a good time was had by all.

Teaching class. Someday maybe they’ll clean them while I watch.
And occasionally I even get to catch a one or two.

Another post full of winning!

My earliest memory's of my father were fishing.

Caught Jim C's video this morning and now your great pics.

This is why I hang around here!

That’s called life lived the right way.

Well done.

Those are some world class crappies!!!! Beautiful fish. Beautiful family and some great memories. Thanks for posting

That's a slammer crappie for sure.
Great work showing the little man the outdoors,and the whole family involved.
Well done sir.

Wonderful stuff! I am gratified to see him being allowed to use the gripper to hold the fish instead of making him "man up" and hold them, which in turn would make him shy about doing that when he is old and big enough to do so.

Damn that one your commander has in her right hand is a hammer 🔨!! Never seen crappie anywhere near that size up here

Heck yeah! Good times.

Hey Kid, that's awesome too !

You hadn't posted much about your wife, for a long time.

I was worried !

Glad she is doing OK Mate !

Thanks for thinking of her, she has good days and bad days, we just have to take it as it comes. She decided to go with us yesterday evening, I had a loader bucket to rebuild but it was calm so I decided it could wait.
We covered a bunch of water and had to work for the two we got but she managed two saugeye, a bluecat, and a crappie. I anchored us by a rock jetty and we crappie fished for a little bit after we gave up on trolling, got another dozen that I just ate for lunch.

These two dickheads are my cleaning partners, couple stray Tomcats that live in our alley. When the filet board comes out they’re Johnny on the spot waiting for their share. They get to fighting and I tell them if they aren’t nice I’m going to cut their tails off with the electric knife!

Great husband, father, life coach !

Pulling a Renfiddy with a live action report. Me and the boy are sitting by the lantern with the rods out. Pretty good bite tonight, 9 blues and a channel so far, probably roll them up at midnight. Had an otter come by a minute ago, first one I’ve ever seen at this lake.
Dude crashed out in his lawn chair about 5 minutes after this picture:)

Awesome!

Very cool!

The boys and I have fished the sound a few times this spring. Ain’t caught schit but beach crabs. Not even a cut throat or a bull head.
About time to hit some local ponds for crappie and stocker trout. At least there is some action there.

Bless you my son.

You have a great family Kid, thanks for posting.

Love it and thanks for sharing. That one incidental a white perch?

Looks like what we call a white bass.

Love those walleyes.

We call them sandbass here but I think all three names apply. They’re not bad eating if you trim the red off the filets. And they fight light crazy. When I was a kid they ran up the creeks to spawn and we’d wear them out on Blakemore Roadrunners. If you want to have a big fish fry and know where to find them, and have a couple buddies that are handy with a filet knife they are your huckleberry since there’s no limit. If you find schools chasing shad they’ll literally bite anything you throw them. Dad and Grandad brought home more than 200 on a couple occasions back in the day when the bite was hot and they got on a big school.

My 87 year old Grandmom informed me this morning at coffee that she was out of fish and I probably needed to get in gear and rectify the situation pronto.
So when we got supper ate and a couple little jobs around the shop done me and my sidekick headed to the pond to gather up a bucket of crappie right quick before dark.

We got enough good sized crappie to make a meal or two for the grandparents but I guess the perch are spawning because we couldn’t keep them off the hook. Must have caught 20 great big ones. They really are beautiful this time of the year.
Wife asked why we didn’t keep a dozen to scale and eat. I told her we’d all go back tomorrow and get a bucketful if she’d scale and I’d head and gut. Her enthusiasm dwindled rapidly!

Making memories that will last their whole lives.
My grandpop was born in 1901. When he was in his late 80's he told me about a fishing trip his father took him on in 1910!

Good stuff, Kid.

Looks fun.

Oh heck yeah

Great stuff Kid! Dam big crappies and Blue gills! My dad would take me cat fishing at night when I was a boy! Fun times! Please keep the pics coming. Plan on going fishing one day this week. I hope!

Been a bit since I’ve updated this thread, been too busy fishing.

Wife wanted to go catfish on a Sunday evening so we went to the lake. I usually don’t catfish during the day but it was a school night and we did okay and had fun anyway.
I caught a “swordfish”. As close as we’ll get here anyway

We’re still wearing out the Eyes. I caught a limit in an hour and 20 minutes last week plus six sandbass, 3 crappie, and a drum.
Had 3 over 20” this go around.
Trolled up this net with a nice Smithwick plug broke off in it, score!
The daily double! A first for me.

This evening momma wasn’t feeling well so we got out of the house to let her rest.
Caught a bucket of nice crappie and a few bass. Just goofing off on a beautiful evening.

Caught this fellow too. We turned him loose after his photo op.

Surf and turf yesterday.

Enough crappie for lunch.
Two at a time on my crappie rig.
Went up the hill at sundown and stunt shot some pigs. Got 4 and about 30 made the brush. Biggest and the littlest in this pic since they died close together. Big one was a barr, don’t know who cut him but he was a big SOB. Used a mix of 55gr Speer SPs, Hornady SPs, and Ballistic Tips cleaning up some partial boxes at the loading bench.

Is crappie (lower case) a generic, catch-all term for panfish? Are the fish in the 1st and 4th photos in the previous post properly identified as Crappies (upper case, proper noun)?

Crappie is a couple of species of Panfish, black and white are the two types I’m aware of though there could be more elsewhere.
Here’s a pair, one white and one black caught on the same jig in the same pond.

keep making memories with that family. They're as blessed to have you as you are to have them. How far south do you have to go to find a frog that size.?

I hope you don't have snakes around big enough to make a meal of that frog.

Love that you still have your old Penn Levelline in play. Prolly a 930?

Yes sir it is a 930. It’s relegated to trolling duty as it has a very slow retrieve speed and doesn’t cast as smooth or far as newer reels but serves fine for trolling.
It was a good friend of mine’s Grandfather’s reel. I helped the grandson go through all the fishing gear when his grandfather passed and he gave me the old Penn to say thanks. I never met his grandfather but I think he might be glad to know his old reel is getting used.

Some Fine Eating, those walleyes and Crappies. Keep the pics coming! I did catch a 12" bass today and one gill.

Kid, your son will be talking about these times when he is an old man. You should be proud of the job you and your wife are doing raising your kids.
Heck, I don’t even know you and I am.

I appreciate the compliment 336. We try our best.

We got a wild hair and made a run to the river this evening after supper. Stopped at a little creek on the way up and caught a few perch for bait, no idea what species this rascal was but he was beautiful.
We started by busting a mob of pigs out of the willows on the trek down to our fishing spot. Carrying a bait bucket, knife, lantern, and a 10’ rod meant no rifle but I let the squeal out of one with a 200gr wadcutter out of my 5” 625 and then it was on down the riverbank to wet a line.

Hot, muggy, and buggy but we didn’t have to wait very long for some action. 4” live perch on an 8/0 Octopus hook was the undoing for this old flathead.
I wasn’t sure the little Penn Mag10 was going to have the drag to keep it out of the logjam but it worked out after a good 5 minute battle.
We had to have the talk again about letting the big ones go so we’ll always have more, the boy wants to eat every big one we catch. In the end he understood and we released her none worse for the wear after a few pics.
We figured we weren’t likely to top that and it was just about full dark so we called it an evening and marched the half a mile back to the truck with smiles on our faces.

And a few more pictures from the last week or two.
Limit of Saugeye with a couple sandbass for good measure
Momma with a magnum perch

Pretty good “eye”
He got this one all by himself picked out the perfect worm and everything, he was pretty proud.
Every time we go to the sporting goods store he’s got to pick out a new lure. Always either a top water plug or a moss frog. This was the first run with his newest moss frog out at the bass pond.

Good stuff.

What are you folks calling "sandies"?

Sandbass or white bass Geno. They’re like mini stripers, super aggressive and fight like dammit but they aren’t the best eating fish we have around.

Damn common names.

I'm a fish head and those back east ones through me every time.

Never caught one, but if they're as tasty as their cousins the stripers, they're some good eatin'\, no? Maybe not as good as those saugeyes, but better than others I bet.

White Bass or Sand Bass as they're called down south, aren't very good eatin'. As Kid or somebody said, you got to get the red out of the meat to make them edible. As he says, they're like mini versions of Striped Bass. In fact, Striped Bass and White Bass crossed are called "Wipers" and are probably more aggressive than their parents. They will spool you quick.

We call them Silver bass up here, not bad , but like you said, have to take the red strip off the meat. Maybe I need your son to pick out some lures for me!

Same with stripers and many other fish. Get that red meat out and it's not bad eating.

But then again, I eat mackerel and barracuda and eel and................................

I knew about wipers but had never heard the white bass called "sand bass". We have a sand bass off the coast of SoCal that is pretty good eating.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barred_sand_bass