A Couple of Crappies

I ended up keeping a buddy company on a trip to Rushing River, Ontario to pick up his new 17’ Prospector Kevlar canoe and we hoped to baptise it on the way back to Winnipeg. The fishing muses seemed to discourage us; he forgot the fish finder, rain splattered the windshield of the Jeep and dark clouds hovered on the horizon. Real fishermen are seldom deterred by the warnings of the muses though and after some careful weighing of choices we settled on Barren Lake.  We hit the water in the early afternoon, me with a 6 wt fly rod and my friend Bill, with his spinning rod. I feel lost this time of year without a fish finder so we trolled half heartedly to a shoreline with some rock rubble and blown down trees and started working the shoreline. I caught an 8” smallmouth and lost 2 larger fish on the strike and then nothing for a few hours. After trying an assortment of flies I went back to my original fly, a yellow rabbit body with deer hair head and shoulders that I had originally tied to catch smallmouth bass. 

Big Buck Bunny

We ended locating a school of crappies and I caught two but missed over a dozen others. I attribute that to the length of the rabbit strip beyond the hook but I was reluctant to shorten the bunny strip...it was the only version of that fly I had. I tried several smaller flies that seemed close in color but with negative results. On that afternoon they wanted only one pattern, the Big Buck Bunny.  The two crappies we caught were nice fish; 1 at 11” and the other a meaty 12 1/2 “.

An 11" and 12 1/2" crappie

I normally release all my fish and despair at taking “stringer” pictures but Bill had never eaten crappie before. And crappies have the misfortune of tasting like candy.