Last night at the Crappie University Class at USI the guest speaker was Doug Sikora. He goes by High Tide on crappie.com too. He's a very personable guy and just loves fishing and especially crappie and perch fishing. If you check out his Instagram site [email protected] you will see some of his pictures of the fish he catches.
Doug talked a lot about the life cycle of the zoo plankton and how they effect the food chain all the way up to the bigger fish. How sunlight effects the movement of the zoo plankton up and down in the water column with the rising and setting sun. How sunlight effect the bite and how the different baits and colors effect the bite. He taught the class how to tie a loop knot to make sure that the jig hangs straight and parallel with the lake bottom or the horizon and doesn't hang with the head up in a vertical position or down in that vertical position. He talked about drop shots fishing and how to tie the jig on the main line leaving a long tag line for the weight to hook onto at the bottom. I used that setup years ago in the 1950's when I was 8 years old and fishing for crappie on Cypress Bay (Kentucky Lake) with my father. We use the KY LAKE CRAPPIE rigs. They consisted of two hooks with the weight 1/4 lb on the rig. You could buy three pre-tied rigs and the lines were wrapped around a long cardboard tube and sold as a package. We went though a lot of these as we fished over stumps and brush along the banks.
Doug also talked about matching the size of the jig head weight to the type of bobber to balance the two together. When a crappie ***** in the jig into it's mouth by flaring it's gill covers and inhaling water with a vacuum effect the weight on the bobber is relieved and the bobber will pop up higher in the water and some times lay over flat. Set the hook quickly when this happens. Crappie don't nibble on the baits like bluegills. They **** it into their mouth with the water and then if they don't like the feel, smell or sensation of the bait they will spit it out fast. You have to be quick and watch the line and bobber to see when they have the bait in their mouth. I don't jerk the hell out of the rod when I get a bite and I use a Richard Williams 7'6" crappie rod that has a lot of give to it. So when I do set the hook the rod absorbs a lot of the pull and doesn't pull the jig hook out of the crappie's mouth. Now if the hook gets in the upper lip area of the crappie mouth it will be harder to get the point of the hook into that area and it pays to have a very sharp hook(s). I use a diamond impregnated electronic hook sharpener to sharpen my hooks during the winter months and get them ready for spring fishing. If your hooks get rusted then it will pay to sharpen them back up and protect them from moisture. Especially on your expensive crank bait hooks. Doug suggested taking the back hooks off a crank bait and replacing them with red treble hooks. Red color is caused by red wave length of light reflecting of the red hooks surface. Other wave lengths of light waves are absorbed and not reflected so you only see the red wave lengths. Red waves are have longer wave lengths than Blue light. Shorter blue wave are absorbed by the water more and thus the red light is the last to be absorbed in the deeper waters. I think I got that right. Don't quote me on this. Look up the wave lengths of the different light colors and double check this. I don't use red hooks. I use the gold Aberdeen type wire hooks in a larger size. I wish that someone would make a larger sized thin wire crappie hook and add a smaller jig head to it so that you get a much slower rate of fall when the jig sinks into the water. A slow fall will get more bites. But you have to have the patience and watch the high colored fishing line carefully to detect the bites. The line may not be as tight and will not transfer the vibrations of the bite as well as when you have a very tight line from the jig to the tip of the rod. I hold onto the line with my fingers to help detect light bites. The bits are all the same from the crappie's aspect. They always **** the bait into the mouth the same way. But the length of the line out, the diameter and type of line, and the amount of sag in the line between where the line enters the water and the tip of the rod will alter the feel of the bite for the fisherman. So I try to keep the line tight as I can in order to better see the bite on the line and also feel the bite with my hands on the sensitive graphite rod. Cork handles may be pretty when they are clean but maybe they also help the feel on the rod with your hands. Cork Vs. the foam rubber handles could make a difference in how the bite vibrations are transferred from the bait, up the line to the rod and into your hand/fingers.
Doug talked for two hours and didn't stop for a break until about 2/3 rd though his presentation and I didn't see any one complaining. Every one seemed to have a good time.
See you next week.
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