Archery Talk

I love everything about hunting in the marsh but the bugs.

If you are in a ground blind I would guess that a thermacell would work great as long as you are playing the wind

 

Oh yea, you have to play the wind down there. Thankfully it’s easy to do on my property because of the shape of the lot and a really predictable wind pattern

 

I use one but only when there is little to no wind. But generally if there is a good breeze it will keep the skeeters in check anyhow. I've shot one doe with a Thermacell running, but here's my take on it.....if a deer can smell your Thermacell, it can also smell you. So the 'smell from the cell' is no worse than the smell from the hunter.
Fun fact: I left my Thermacell at home this year; I'm at the age now where I've decided that if it's that hot, and skeeters are that bad....I'm going to the house.

 

Yea I was about 5 minutes from calling off our hunt that evening when the breeze kicked up enough to keep them out of my ears and off of my face (they had bit my face 5 times by then)

5 mins from my cutoff point, we started to hear the pigs fighting just up from us. Funny thing was my buddy forgot the spotlight and it was too dark to shoot. So he had to shoot it from the light of a flashlight thankfully it was only about 40 yards from us

 

We found that being up in a climbing stand helps fight the mosquitoes in an afternoon hunt. Most of them (not all of them) rise with the warming air and suspend up in the atmosphere during the day, coming back down with the cooling currents as the cooling air settles in the late afternoon. They drop past and below you an hour or so before dark if you are 15-25 feet up in a tree. They settle below you and arrive to assault a ground hunter right at the witching hour, when the big bucks move in the last light, just when you don't want to be fidgeting and moving to swat one in front of your eyes or in your nostril. If you are in a tree stand you are above the majority of them the last 15-30 minutes of shooting time and can turn off that Thermocell during the critical time in the afternoon hunt and be still.

Be sure to save your scent pads and butane cannisters. There are vids on the net about how to regenerate both. Refilled cannisters last longer. You can supercharge the recycled pads and make them much more effective by increasing the Permethrin ratio in your liquid regeneration solution. (Disclaimer: May be harmful to your health.) I haven't bought either in years. I can't believe what they want for them now. Highway robbery.

 

me, errytime i tryd to go fishin last year...

 

YEAH! I am LAUGHING my ass off! It seems like EVERYTIME, doesn't it! When my trolling motor prop keeps rocking up and out of the water, it is time to PACK IT IN! (Truth be told, our best two 25-fish crappie limit day happened on a 25-30mph wind HOWLING right down the middle of Sam Rayburn. We were on a brushpile in the middle of the Black Forest, a mile offshore, right in the teeth of it. Wind so bad I couldn't even fish most of the time, I could only instant-on the trolling motor every time it went into the water to hold us on the brushpile. Took total concentration to do it, managing the extreme torque-steer you get when you instant-on a foot-controlled trolling motor that MUST be set to max thrust to successfully fight the wind. My fishing buddy fished, I helmed full-time except for the few times the wind laid for a few seconds. The wind turned the big crappie on: Only two sub-sized throw-backs in 52 caught, most of them 13-14 inch SLABS.) What a workout for a couple of out of shape old men. Exhausted by 10am, the next day we were so sore we felt like we would have felt if we had allowed our friends to beat us with wiffleball bats. Staying upright in a small boat in high winds is a total workout.

I mean, JEEZ!! It was a hard lesson to learn, but I finally grasped that when it comes to turning the fish on the wind is your friend. But DAMN! Not THAT much!

I sleep in that boat over these brushpiles at night in my hammock. It takes three Thermocells to keep the skeeters beat back: my hunting Thermo, and two of those picnic table Thermos.

By the way...THERMOCELLS HAVE A LIFETIME GUARANTEE! They have replaced two for me, no questions asked.

 

my fishin spots (ponds aside) are at least 1 hour tow....i wont go, if the wind insists to blow

 

Good advice on the pads and butane!! Thanks!

 

Yea my boat stays on the trailer if the wind is above 18 (gusts or sustained)

fighting tides and currents are fun enough.. not adding wind on top of that

 

Come over to Mississippi and show me how to catch crappie on Grenada. I know the guy that owns B&M and have a set of 8 of their 10' poles and 6 of their 14' for spider rigging but the only thing I catch if I break them out is a spider web of tangles. I can catch bass most of the time but it doesn't matter how good of electronics I have I can't get on crappie worth a damn.

 

Haven’t done it since I was a kid but I remember crappie fishing had to be super early in the morning while it was still cold out. We always straight lined down to the bottom and would periodically reel up one rotation til we found the depth they were at. Always used live minnows

man I hated waking up at 4am as a kid but I’d give everything to be back in that boat with my grandpa one more time.

didn’t mean to make that heavy, just stirred up some really amazing memories!

 

They're much easier to catch when they're on the banks (usually early April). A small jig under a small floater (about 10")....if u catch one you may catch 40 from the same spot.

 

I went up there to fish a few times two springs ago with some friends and my uncle on different weekends (cancelled last year thanks covid) and the water was like 13' high if I remember right. I brought out the boat a few times but fighting wind combined with the fact that anywhere that was the right depth for fish to spawn was full of brush made it impossible to navigate my boat. We ended up breaking out the waders and fishing brush but I only one crappie down at the spillway as well as a load of white bass and a few largemouth.

 

Guys, crappie catching ruined me as a bass fisherman, and if you are not careful it will ruin you too! YOU CAN DO THIS. IT IS EASY once you understand the process. We don't even call it crappie fishing anymore. We call it crappie catching. It is too easy and it will turn you into a lazy bass fisherman. When you get on them good it's drop the minnow in the water rigged with a #6 light-wire hook under a split shot of your size choice, count it down thousand-one, thousand-two, thousand-three, then lift gently but firmly to set the hook. The bite and catch is that quick. If it ain't that quick that day we go home, take care of honey-do's and come back another day when it is that quick. The one comment I hear when I take a bass addict is, "I forgot how fun this is!" When you are on them over a brushpile full of them it is that quick and that easy. The key is finding the brushpiles already set by the community, or by the state, or sink your own. It is all about the brushpiles. Find the unmolested, unfished brushpiles and the crappie will be thick on them. You have to be there first in the morning to get the full benefit of their loading up overnight. They will produce crappie throughout the day, but not as many if they have not been fished. In early spring to early summer and again late summer to early winter they are in and on the brushpiles. And it's one right after another, that quick, limited only by how long it takes you to get this crappie off, get another minnow out of the bait bucket and on the hook, strip out 8-12 feet of line and drop it in on a taught line again. That quick. When they are REALLY biting it is one right after the other, without having to wait on the bite. You know the bite is really on when your minnow (dropped always on a taught line) suddenly stops dropping when the minnow is only 3-5 feet down in 18-25 feet of water, and your line gets coils in it above the water. They are so eager to bite that in their competition to get the sinking minnow first they rocket from out of the top of the brushpile 7-8 foot down and intercept the minnow, continuing up and away from their competitors, thereby producing a slack line with coils in it. Set that hook! Or your line just starts to pendulum sideways as the crappie swims off with it. That's when it is too easy, and giggle-producing fun. In our indoctrination that only bass fishing is king, we forgot about how to have immediate, simple fun. This will remind you. We are so spoiled that if we have to sink a minnow and wait more than 20-30 seconds for a bite on this brushpile, screw that! We are off to another brushpile. There is always crappie that'll bite better'n that on another brushpile. Let's go find them! Tie into a quick 25-fish limit in 1-2 hours and, like me, you too will seldom fish for bass ever again. Or, finished CATCHING 25 keeper crappie EACH AND EVERY ANGLER by 10am, THEN you turn to FISHING for bass the rest of the day: the pressure is off to produce. You have 3-4 good meals uncleaned in the ice chest. If you don't catch bass as is often the case, so what? You have 3-4 good meals, uncleaned in the ice chest. Crappie are a pestilence and will quickly unbalance a lake. Catch AND EAT as many as the law allows without guilt: The Lord will make more, I guarantee you! I've got almost 50 pounds of soft plastics in that tool room over there that go back into the 80's that I never use anymore. Because crappie! Most so old they are new again, revolutionary again as they were when they took over the bass world in succession, (anybody remember Creme, then craw worms, then Ringworms? Then Sluggos? The the orginal Berkley black and blue Powerworms? Then wacky-worm Creme?) (Do any of you young bucks know what anise oil is?). And now only I possess them anymore! (Insert evil scientist laugh here.) Pounds and pounds of them. What a waste, because crappie fishing got in the way. ( I pull a pack or two out when we go bass fishing and anyone under fifty is like, "WTF are those?" Then later after they have produced results, "Hey you Bogart, give us one to fish!"

So how do you get started? Consider doing this next time the bass are slow and you get tired of cast and reeling. This is how I got hooked one day when the bass turned off. (It's too easy.) Idle down your creek channel breaks in 18-25 feet of water, get you a cup of coffee and just watch your depth-finder. Look for it to draw this:



As soon as this "hump" begins to draw and develop on a solid bottom on the right side of your screen toss out one of those H-shaped orange markers directly behind your boat motor so that its weight will hopefully settle into the brushpile. Then, drive the boat back past the buoy FOUR times, once on each side of it, from each of the four cardinal compass directions, passing closely 4-to-6 feet close, where the buoy passes right beside your boat. You want your four passes past the buoy to have made a tick-tack-tow "pound sign", #, around and close to that buoy, with the buoy being in the center square of that # when you are done. The whole time your eyes are glued to the sonar, sucking in the info. Doing this further develops your awareness of where the bulk of the brushpile lies in relation to your first buoy, and where the highest point of the pile is. Have 2-3 more buoys at the ready to instantly throw out, always thrown right behind your transom transducer, as your mental image develops of the size, shape and proximity of the brushpile to the first buoy. Those four passes will reveal exactly where the highest point of the brushpile is located, and you want to throw out AT LEAST a second buoy to mark that exact place in the waters surface. Trust me: it is hard to fish a brushpile with only one buoy out. Two gives you better spatial orientation and awareness as to where you are above the brushpile. And you will often discover secondary brushpiles as you make your turns to do the #, and sometimes these turn out to be even bigger piles, becoming the primary pile, so have those extra buoys ready to toss.

Armed with this mental image of where the top of the pile is you start by dropping your first minnow on to it, but not in it, not yet, then if no bite by the time it reaches the top of the pile, only then start on the outside of the pile and fish your way around it, fishing only as deep and as close as the first bite reveals they are willing to come out and meet you. If none bite on top, then play out additional line and pitch it away from the pile 10-15 feet and allow it to sink on a taught line and slowly pendulum in, successively a little more line each pitch until you determine the depth the bite will occur. Watch for your line to "tick". That is an agressive bite and tells you the bite is in full swing! Most often though they will gently inhale it and it won't "tick" It will stop its pendulum swing in and start a pendulum in a different direction and swim off, almost always AWAY from the pile, again due to competition. That's a giggle moment! Note how deep, and where in relation to the two buoys. They are your "eyes" as to how to get back to that same spot. And often times your continued success will depend entirely on being able to drop it back into that same spot. Sometimes they won't chase it and they are all bunched up. You have to hit them on the head to get a bite. Duplicate until the bite slows. Then proceed around the pile as they may have repositioned, like on the shady side if the sun came out from behind a cloud. Finally, move deeper down THE SIDES of the pile, then down into the pile, and when that slows fish deeper until you are on bottom as the bite slows, first on the bottom on the sides, then on the bottom down through the pile. The catfish will be under the crappie, near the bottom. DO NOT fish the bottom until you have to when the bite slows. DO NOT drop to the bottom then "reel up" until the "top-down" bite slows. Doing so will spook the crappie. Catfish/white bass/yellow bass/hybrids/drum will sometimes move in and run the crappie off the brushpile. Go find another brushpile. The second one of any of these you catch, go find another brushpile. The crappie bite is over on that pile for now. Come back 2-4 hours later if you haven't caught a limit yet.

Timing: On Rayburn the crappie bite does not turn on until the sun is first visible on the horizon or over the tops of the trees. Then it begins. It is over when it drops behind the horizon. I have fished for them every hour of the day. I no longer do. Start at 7:45am to 8 when the bite turns on. We WILL bass fish before then, don't get me wrong. Stripers on Spooks up shallow in the pre-dawn darkness, the bite slowly transitioning to bass as the light grows and the stripers go deep. Then cook breakfast in the boat, and coffee while anchored up over our first brushpile so to reserve it as our own until the edge of the sun is visible. Then it is on. If your there at the wrong time none of this means squat.

You find the brushpile with your transom-mounted transducer. You STAY ON the brushpile MUCH EASIER if you have a trolling motor-mounted transducer that will draw the brushpile in real time underneath your bow. Instant awareness of where you are and where the pile is right now. That's so necessary to your success and maximum enjoyment of doing this right. SO important. Almost impossible without a bow-mounted sonar. I constantly consult my bow DownScan. It and my buoys are my eyes beneath the surface. EVEN BETTER...an old flasher. Guys, if you have access to an old gimbal-mounted flasher, PLEASE PM ME. MY KINGDOM FOR ONE OF THESE. Sometimes even on a large brushpile you have to drop it into a particular area on the brushpile the size of a wash pan or you won't get a bite. That's virtually impossible without a trolling-motor mounted transducer.

Use H-shaped marker buoys: due to their shape they stop playing-out line when the weight reaches the bottom, preventing it from wandering too far from the actual place you marked, driven by the wind. Round buoys are USELESS. They windblow away from above the pile, rotating out extra line, mark downwind inaccurately. Don't even go out there without H-shaped buoys.

Fine-meshed minnow net. Get one. Nothing more infuriating that unsuccessfully hand-chasing minnows around a livewell in 2-foot waves when the bite may be fleeting. Ask me how I know.

Make a crappie counter out of a strip of leather stringing the number of beads on to it equal to your state's creel limit, ours being 25 over 10" per day. Make one for every angler you may have in your boat. Pull one down every keeper. Gonna save you a citation. Ask me how I know about not having one. Ask me this more than once. It is hard to keep an accurate count in the fog of war. Impossible it seems, from my experience. When you are having fun. Tearing them a new asshole. Crappie Math For Dummies: 25 in Base crappie = a variable, n: From my experience, without fail, and ALWAYS when I least need it to be, n can be any number OVER 25, but NEVER 25. Most often n has been 26, sometimes 27, and one time, even 29. Take your pick, because I haven't seen a game warden around here in a long...

Dedicated enclosed crappie measuring tool, not your bass measuring ruler. Saves time, doesn't allow them to flounce over the gunwale. Ask me how I know. Ask me many times. Attached to a piece of pool noodle on a lanyard.

Carbide-jawed 12" forceps, stats or needle-holders of your choice for...everything actually. MDS 11-series from Medline. Surgical-grade, not floor-grade. The ones with the gold on the gripping rings. Expensive. Buy once, cry once. ATTACHED TO A FLOAT ON A LANYARD. (No, we are not gonna' even go there.) Crappie's mouths are smaller than bass. You want to be able to retrieve the hook without killing the throwbacks. These reach deeper and are slimmer than fishing pliers. Carbide inserts makes them grip better than anything else too.

Size 4 or 6 LIGHT WIRE hooks, tied to 12lb test fluorocarbon line, NOT HEAVY WIRE CRAPPIE HOOKS. Buy the 100 pack, because you are going to get hung up, but surprisingly, not as much as you would think! You can pull the light wire hooks straight and get loose without breaking 12lb test line, but you will break off with the heavier crappie hooks. Pull it up out of the pile, take your forceps and re-bend the hook, add minnow and you are right back into the fray instead of trying to retie in heavy seas. That's fun, said nobody, ever. We have caught bass off the piles on these hooks over six pounds. If you back off the drag and play them (who ever did that?), they will not straighten the hook. Hint: If you give them slack after you find that you got a big one on, they will always swim away from the pile, not in to it. Feed them slack and let them get out there a ways, then slowly put pressure on them to tire them out. THEN when they surface and turn on their side just reel them in.

Re-pinchable split-shot weights, about 6-12 inches above the hook, shorter as you have to move into the brushpile to prevent the minnow from swimming you into a hang-up. I prefer 1/2 ounce. Two in high winds.

This is what it looks like when a school of shad swims past the brushpile and the crappie come out and slash through the school:



This is what we make our brushpiles out of now:


As PVC has almost the same specific density of water it is not drawable or discoverable by even the finest sonar, even if equipped with CHIRP or DownScan technology. We tie-wrap bunches of bamboo to it to augment their fish attracting and holding capability, but mostly so that we can go back and find them! Bamboo stems are invisible for the same reason, but for some reason the bamboo leaves show, but only slightly. They look like a small school of baitfish. Anybody searching for brushpiles would motor right by them! Ours are only discovered by others observing us wrecking the crappie over one. So we "stealth fish" in the middle of the week, not on weekends. And we sink enough of them so we can abandon it as soon as another boat gets close, pulling up the buoys fast so they don't see us fishing a buoy-marked area, but rather allowing them to infer that we are Carolina rigging a creek channel break in deep water.

Some results:








In Texas you can possess two day's creel limits in camp, and until you get to the house, called a possession limit. (Once there you can have as many crappie as you want.) Here, a limit of crappie and bass on two consecutive days. 25 crappie in less than 45 minutes both days:


Question: Does that man pictured above look totally exhausted?! It's like what doing meth must be like: when you get into them you don't let up. You burn it at both ends it is so fun!

It isn't any fun if you are exhausted, and old men get tired quick in high seas. This, possibly the most important equipment of all to ensure an endless hot shower and comfortable camping sleep to prepare us to do it again tomorrow:

Camp rule: Shower can only be used if you are holding a ZingZang Bloody Mary. Long soaks in the steam normally require two.


In a week or so of fishing we can stock our freezers with enough crappie, bass and catfish to feed our families for the year. After that we give it away to our friends and churches. I haven't been able to do this in almost three years. I am a full-time caregiver now to my 98-year old father who has dementia. I can wait, but you get out there and post up some pictures of yours.

This isn't hard to do if you are on brushpiles. You can do this too. But beware, you won't be bass fishing much anymore!

 

Nice writeup!

 

Shit, I have to try it now.

I have to get the batteries in my boat on the charger then ill have to start scouting some close lakes for brush piles while waiting on trotlines or something.

I'll need some marker buoys because I always fish marks on them but I think I have everything else on the list. We will see when I make it I guess.

I assume you use shorter rods and fish right over the brushpiles?

 

Yep, straight down. I use my 7 1/2-foot med-light casting Berkley Lightning Rods I got for $16.99 on sale a few years ago. And those cheap $49 Walmart Abu Garcia bait casting reels. Same 12lb fluorocarbon line that I fish cranks or wacky-worm with. Pretty simple. Because you never know when you are going to tie into a 4lb crappie, or a big bass or catfish, and with 12lb test on a baitcasting reel you are ready for that eventuality. With heavier equipment I can "horse" the crappie away from the pile quickly before they pull me into it and get hung. I like ultralight fishing for them too. Like jigs too. Just depends on the bite. Can't pull a jig loose though. Gets expensive. I've got a couple of those long crappie rods, but they are not needed in this style. Just cheap bass stuff. We are old, old-school, raised with Depression-era values, subsistence fishing, to feed our families, staying in practice for when TSHTF. Sportfishing comes in a close second.

Interesting to note, unlike those guys you see on the crappie shows who stroll those spider-rig set-ups with 8-20 rods on the spider racks, we only ever use one rod. We never even bait a second rod. No time for that. The action is too fast, literally, if you don't have a crappie on in ten seconds, pull it out and put it back in the water in a different spot on the brushpile. If they don't bite in five minutes of that, go to another pile. If it's the same result on 2 or 3 more, we are wasting time. Put the boat on the trailer. I ALWAYS got shit to knock out at the house! It is seldom that way though. If you go at the right time. If you execute the plan outlined above. We are hardwired for catching limits, but even when the bite is off it is possible to scrounge and put enough in the boat to make a nice fish fry that evening so that the trip was not a total loss.

We've fished the banks for them in the spring, and trolled for them deep in the mid-summer heat, day and night, but spring and fall brushpile fishing with instant results is a whole lot easier. And we are lazy...

FALL IS THE BEST. I'd rather be in fall crappie camp at Rayburn than in deer camp. I've given up hunting, and crappie fishing pretty much caused that. That, and the smartphone: Fellowship is dead in deer camp due to the smartphone. Nobody yucks it up around the campfire anymore. They sit and look at their phones, playing a game. Fuck that. The crappie you can catch that move back on to the piles in Fall have been out in open water gorging on schools of shad all summer, and they are MONSTERS. So that is the strong influence to be at the lake in the Fall rather than in the woods. That, and can you imagine what it is like to have 110,000 acre Sam Rayburn almost all to yourself, the #1 fishery in the entire nation, unfished and unmolested, because everybody else is in the woods hunting? It's like HEAVEN, that's what!

 

God bless you.

Me too. Me too. For me it was Grandma. Grandma taught me how to fish. Thank you for reminding me. Truly, I'd give everything I have and all that I will ever have to flounder fish with her just one more minute down at Rollover Pass.

We are truly Blessed. Thank you.

 

I feel you, my Texan brother!