Local knowledge—it’s the
earthy flavor and time-tested confidence in the voice of a weathered character
who can forecast the weather, crop yield, and animal behaviors with just a
finger in the wind and an eye on the past.
I’ve had the pleasure of knowing a few such minds. Most were outdoorsmen, and could unfailingly
concur on a single truth—turkeys start gobbling, shad start running, and
crappie start biting when the dogwood buds grow to the size of a squirrel’s
ear. In central Virginia, that system is
more practical and manifestly observable than any calendar or watch of any
ability.
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| Photo by Matt Reilly |
The latter prediction
has been the most valuable to me.
Crappie will bite year-round, but after the new year has brought
sufficient sunlight and warmth to bud the state tree, the water temperatures in
our stillwaters have largely warmed and teased shoreline vegetation to the
surface, providing the tuxedoed panfish cover in which to stage their
spawn. Around these grassbeds, crappie
become much more accessible to a pair of youngster in a john boat.
During my younger
years, my family and I almost always ended up at my grandparents’ lake house on
the Northern Neck in early spring. The
lake held my interest more than the house did.
There were fish to be caught in what was then my playground, and crappie
were no minority in its waters.
My cousin and I
typically launched the small boat that was kept tied up to the dock two or
three times per day, returning for meals and in the instance of any bouts of
dangerous weather. At 35 acres, the lake
was easily navigable with the small trolling motor mounted on the stern, which
we commonly re-designated as the bow for simplicity in navigation.
I was often assigned
the captain’s role. With crappie on the
mind I would point us towards some distant creek mouth or cove and we would be
freed from the constraints of land, lake breeze in our hair.
Finding ourselves in an
intimate arena, attention was turned to our tackle boxes. We regularly took crappie on Roadrunners,
small spoons, grubs, Beetle Spins, and crankbaits, but there was no science to
our choice. Whatever struck our fancy
found its way to the water.
One particular morning,
we enjoyed good success in the upper end of a creek throwing small crankbaits
and landing some quality fish. It seemed
that the skinny areas held the best fish.
So I would man the motor, positioning my cousin in the bow for a long
cast through a narrow lane of shrouding laurel.
Concentration was
paramount in making the deep cast, but as the bow of the boat slowly slid into
position, the voice of a hoarse dragon erupted from the thick bushes
adjacent. Heron Cove was so dubbed when
we discovered a nesting green heron as the source of the commotion.
Composure regained, my
cousin made the cast. Thump.
His crankbait collided with a stump.
He kept reeling, and connected with the papery mouth of a big slab.
The long, riverine nature of the lake and a
handful of recently purchased gold spoons came together in my mind one day early
in the season, when the white flowers of the dogwoods were still scarce among
the hardwood banks. With the aid of the
trolling motor and built in rod holders, we quickly developed a trolling
system, and with the speed set just fast enough to keep our lures out of the
woody snags on the bottom, patrolled the lake in search of a suspended school.
Crappie are highly
mobile schooling fish. So when we landed
the first fish just minutes into the routine, I experimentally employed an old
trick, tying 20 feet of fishing line through the hole left by the hook in the
fish’s mouth and tagging the end with an inflated pink balloon. The rest of the afternoon, trolling was
abandoned for following and placing casts around the bobbing balloon.
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Evening came. After dinner we took to the water once again in
search of our ballooned friend.
We found him in a
favorite evening cove and freed him. With
Roadrunners we beat the banks, the evening light slowly creeping out of the
scene as we competed for numbers. We
were tied somewhere in the 30s, but short-striking fish caused many to lose the
hook at the boat, sometimes even breaking free and back into the lake after
they had been hoisted from the water.
The light was soon gone
and the temperature dropped. Sweaters
broke out when the water lapping against the hull was our greatest perception
of place. A classic breeze filled our
senses, and we were comfortable, amid a murky southern lake dimpled with the
snowy petals of dogwoods and a sporting springtime tradition carried on.
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