4/9/2019 More Crappie from the Inflatable Crappie Boat at Sardis Lake
Today was unseasonably warm, high of 79. After my maiden crappie voyage the day before in the Intex Explorer Pro 200 yielded three jigging fish including a foot long slab, my plan was to get up, get Cal dressed, take him to day care then go fish. We both slept in, so plan B involved running errands with little man and hopes of running out to Sardis during his nap. Shortly after mama got him down, I was off to Highway 7 with my rods and raft. I didn’t realize I had arrived without my air pump (the second time in a month) until I was parked on the side of the highway at my fishing spot, standing in flip flops (in an ant bed). I cursed the ants (who only bit me a dozen times) and drove back home. It was a 42 minute fatal error that killed my early mid-afternoon fishing hopes. Rather than try to get back out there and fish for 30 minutes, I opted to take my best girl for a snowcone. She had rainbow and I had blue Hawaiian.
After that fatherly display of affection (which was predicated on her agreeing to fish with me and Cal afterwards), we went home to collect the littlest Barton. To Landry’s delight and my dismay, we were informed by Mom that today was gymnastics. Plan C. I took Dees to gymnastics and CaloftheWild and I took the little Crappie Boat to Frank Walker Landing and parked on the side of highway 7. We floated through the trees and Cal ate snacks while I sniffed out fishing spots. At one point Cal dropped his apple (recovered) and I dropped a rigged cane pole (lost forever) in the water. At another point, a State Trooper issued a sticker ticket (aka big orange do not park here warning). We paddled, we sniffed for fish, and where we smelled them we jigged. Trees poked and prodded, to which I would say “get out of here tree” and Cal would parrot each time we got near something he thought my scob his nob. Finally we both agreed to go home. But there was this one cypress right by the Corolla truck. And it smelled like “feesh”. So I threw jigs at the tree. And then a “bump”. I set the hook on my Berkley Beetle Bou Marabou Chartreuse and White Jig and felt the tug of a foot long black slab thrashing on the other end of the line. To Cal’s and my delight, I boated, measured, took pictures with and put on the stringer a keeper Sardis Lake crappie (12” by the hair on his chin).
I presented a few more Arkie hair jigs and my go-to forever crappie jig while Cal correctly identified the class taxonomy of our harvest a dozen or more times.
No more bites, but another day of not getting skunked trying something new and with a happy outdoor baby boy. Proud papa. So then we loaded up and headed to house.