WHEN LINE COUNTS
Year-Round Crappie
 EDITOR'S
NOTE: Billy Blakely of Tiptonville, Tennessee, manages
Blue Bank Resort on Reelfoot Lake and also chief fishing
guide there. Each day Blakely and the other guides who
work with him on Reelfoot Lake take clients out fishing
for bluegills, crappie, catfish and bass. “We
have to depend on the fishing line we use to help us
be successful and to help our clients to catch fish,”
Blakely explains. “That’s the reason we’ve
all changed over to Mossy Oak Fishing Line. We know
that when a fish takes the bait we can depend on the
Mossy Oak Line to put that fish in the boat.”
This week Blakely will tell us how he and the other
guides at Blue Bank produce large numbers of fish each
day throughout the spring and summer. You may not believe
the catch numbers that Blakely reports, but if you doubt
that he and his other guides can produce as many fish
in a day as they say.
Because Reelfoot Lake is such a shallow lake and has
so many logs, sunken trees and brush in the bottom of
it, we catch crappie all year long up here. We fish
with 8-pound-test Mossy Oak Fishing Line on 12, 16-foot
B’n’M poles and spider-rig (slow troll)
to catch the fish just under the surface. We use a double-hook
crappie rig on the ends of the poles and bait with minnows.
We use a crappie rig that has one hook tied to the bottom
of the line, a ¼-ounce sinker about 4 inches
up the line from the bottom hook and a drop hook about
6-8 inches above the sinker. When we fish for crappie,
we use 8-pound-test line for our main line and 6-pound-test
line for leaders going from our main line to our hooks.
I bait with about a 2- inch
live shiner minnow. We troll along the stump fields
and the underwater log piles and try to let our baits
swim just above the wood. We fish with all 12 poles
out the front, and we have three seats on the front
of the boat so allow three people to fish at one time.
Each fisherman is responsible for four poles. In an
average day of fishing in May and June, usually one
boat will catch 60-90 crappie fishing like this. Often
that one boat will catch more than 100 crappie. Our
crappie here at Reelfoot will average from 3/4- up to
2-1/2-pounds each. In a day of crappie fishing with
three anglers, we’ll carry 20 dozen minnows with
us. Unlike most other lakes that only produce good numbers
of crappie during the spring spawn, because Reelfoot
is so shallow and has so much fallen timber in it, anglers
here can catch crappie all year.
 To
learn more about Blue Bank Resort, go to www.bluebankresort.com
or call
1-877-258-3226. Blue Bank has a motel, restaurant, guide
service, rental boats, motors, fishing tackle and a
bait shop. You also can visit www.strikeking.com
to learn about the company’s baits for catfish.
For more information about Mossy Oak Fishing Line, go
to www.mossyoakfishing.com.
To learn more about Yo-Yos, go to http://www.rockingaltd.com/mfish.html
or contact Mechanical Fisher Division, P.O. Box 1170,
Diamond City, Arkansas 72630, (870) 422-7715.
TOMORROW: BUSTING BASS ON REELFOOT
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