Fairy Lake Fishing – Aug 18, 2013
Sunday was a late start kind of day. I woke to the sun shining through the Norway spruce outside the bedroom window, and a cacophony of calls from the birds. As much I wanted to go fishing, I was in no hurry to get out of bed.
By the time we had fed the fuzzy ones, looked after the horses, and fed ourselves, it was nearing noon and we knew there was only one place to head at that point of the day – Fairy Lake. Perhaps our decision was based on the fact that we hadn’t fished there in months. That’s too long to go without a visit to my favorite little crappie factory.
Our goal for the day was to target bass, but as Darrell was parking the boat trailer I took a look around at the weeds and wondered how long it would be before we changed our minds and went for crappie. Unless we found some big bass, I knew we wouldn’t be able to resist the scrappy little buggers.
I love seeing all this weed! Throughout the day we found that weed in tight to shore was not the place to be, the fish were coming in slightly deeper water.
Poor picture quality (iPhone’s don’t zoom well), but this little painted turtle was getting some sun.
We weren’t the only people enjoying an afternoon of fishing on Fairy Lake – there were several boats on the water, and most of us appeared to be tossing frogs. Darrell and I worked our way to the other end of the lake, where the weed is thick, the stumps are plentiful, and finding big bass usually not hard. The surface temps were cooler than expected, hovering in the low to mid 70s.
I turned a few bass with my Jackall Iobee frog (I know, I swear by my Scum Frogs, but I paid a fortune for this frog and want it to catch something) but only one seemed to be the size I was looking for, and they all seemed to bite short. Darrell has made a concerted effort to improve his flipping technique and spent much of the day flipping to stumps. It worked – he was the only one to land a few bass.
One of Darrell’s bass. Flipping to stumps was the best technique for landing these guys. The warm sun had them hiding under the weeds.
At some point I decided to switch to a buzz bait and see if I could get a reaction bite. I got a reaction bite alright, and landed this little pike.
We had a few more hits, saw a few larger bass cruising around, got the boat stuck on some stumps, and watched as one resident of the trailer park set about emptying his boat of water. I could smell BBQs and hear the ice cream truck driving up the road. The swans were hanging out in their usual area and I watched them drift along for a bit. Really, I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect summer day.
As I had assumed, we eventually decided chasing crappie was the best way finish off our day. They could be found pretty much anywhere around the lake, but the weren’t schooling very tightly so it was more of a one shot deal. We headed to our favorite spot – deeper water with some good weed cover, and started looking for shadows. Neither of us landed anything on our first few casts so we quickly changed out those lures for our Berkley Micro Power Nymphs. That did the trick. Darrell had pulled a few in before I managed to land one, so I stopped to watch his technique and find out where I was going wrong. The key, it turned out, was to be on the back side of the weed from the sun, and drop the lure right in, or right beside, the weed. The fish didn’t want to swim in open water to hit the lures. Once I figured that out I was never more than three casts without a fish.
One of the first crappie of the day. We caught a lot of these smaller guys, but I never mind that.
One of the bigger ones. We saw the much bigger monsters, but we had a hard time sneaking up on them before they would take off.
I don’t know how long we spent targeting crappie, but I know we stayed on the water much later than we had planned to. Whenever one of us would suggest leaving, the other would say, “One more cast.” Maybe I haven’t graduated to that level of wanting big, so-called ‘quality’ fish over anything else. I just like to catch fish. One of my favorite fish that day was a bass not even the length of my hand, that shot out of the weeds like a missile to take my jig.
We finally packed it in when we realized that it was past the time to feed the dogs. It was another wonderful outing on Fairy Lake, and next time I’ll probably forget about targeting anything else, and just start with the crappie.
argosgirl
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