Binbrook Crappie Derby 2012
Last Saturday, May 12th, I found myself waking up far earlier than I consider decent. There wasn’t enough tea available to help me wake up as I stumbled around the house grumbling at Darrell and trying to pry my eyelids open. I’m not a morning person.
The reason for early cacophony of alarms that got me out of bed was so we could hit the road and make it to Binbrook Conservation Area for the Annual Binbrook Crappie Derby. I had agreed with Darrell that we should try to be there as early as possible, and since the gates opened at six, that meant an early start to my morning.
A decently long drive was just the ticket to allow me time to wake up and be able to form sentences. By the time we turned onto the road bearing the entrance to the park, I was relatively awake and excited about spending the day chasing crappie. I was not, however, prepared for what awaited us. A lineup of cars, trucks and boats snaked its way along the road. Awesome! I was actually thrilled to be part on the lineup.
The lineup in front of us…
…and behind.
After making our way into the park and through the check-in, we headed for the launch that was straight ahead. Not our best idea. We don’t need a launch for our little boat but there were a lot of bigger boats there, and we ended up in line with them. Eventually we made our way out of the launch lineup and into the parking area where we launched by pushing through the weeds.
Looking back at the launch.
A beautiful way to start the morning. My grumpiness about the early start was forgotten as I watched this wonderful sunrise.
The previous visit we made to Binbrook gave us a starting point for the derby and we headed to a bay where we knew we could get on some fish. The water levels had dropped from our visit the week before though, and the tree that had produced the most dynamite action was a dud. We weren’t too worried and started to toss our jigs into other fallen trees around the bay – and the crappie started biting. Toss the jig, wait a second, watch it disappear, and reel in a fish. Pretty simple.
In no time at all we were catching crappie after crappie. It was awesome.
A quick pic and a quick release – a great way to spend a morning.
While we catching tons of fish, we weren’t really catching big one.
Despite having a bountiful few hours in the bay, and catching well over 70 crappie, we decided that we had to move on and look for a big one.
We tried several other shore lines and sunken trees, specifically ones located at a drop near deeper water. We caught crappie, but nothing big. We moved into deeper water where many of the other boats were fishing and tried to find the big one. Nothing. We finished the day with over 100 crappie, but not one that we thought was big enough to weigh in. I didn’t mind. I had a spectacular time catching fish and enjoying the great weather, even when it got very windy and started taxing the trolling motor battery.
After pulling the boat up to shore and starting to unload, I spent some time watching the other boats pulling out at the ramp and noticed something interesting. Unlike the many other places where boat launch etiquette is in short supply, this launch was running like a well-oiled machine. Boats calmly waited in line, taking their turn to drop off the driver to retrieve the vehicle, then quickly and efficiently getting their boat out and pulling away from the ramp before parking to put their gear away. What a wonderful sight.
A small view of the parking lot after the derby.
The derby was followed by a BBQ lunch (included with the price of the derby ticket) and then the awards presentation.
There were prizes for the ten heaviest crappie weighed in by juniors and for the five heaviest crappie weighed in by adults. On top of that, there were 150 tagged fish, as well as several door prizes and two grand prizes. Fishing World provided the majority of the prizes and did an outstanding job. Every junior participant walked away with some sort of prize, and some walked away with much more. I can guarantee they will all want to fish again after the attention they got at this derby.
The top junior was Eric Turner, weighing in a crappie of 1.4lbs. Amazing! The top adult was Josh Miller, weighing in a crappie of 1.82lbs. Wow! In all, there were 15 fish weighing in over 1lb. What a great crappie fishery.
Although I was exhausted by the end of the day, I had an amazing time. There’s no better way to spend a day then by being on the water. Participating in a fun event like this was a bonus. I thoroughly enjoyed my day and will definitely plan to attend again next year.
Congrats to all of the volunteers that make the Binbrook Crappie Derby happen. Thank you for all your work!
argosgirl
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