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Let's Catch Some Fish We Can Eat - 4/27/2004 -
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I knew my fishing buddy, John Lawrence, was serious. We were sitting in a duck blind on an Arkansas River island one cold December morning, when he said, “I am tired of catching nothing but fish that we have to let go. I told June (his wife) that I was gonna make you start fishing for crappie or some kind of fish that we can eat.” He persisted with that theme for the rest of duck season. I negotiated an agreement to make a few late winter and early spring outings for crappie and walleye before we started bass fishing.
It had been years since we had done any serious crappie fishing and most of that was in eastern and southern Arkansas. We pumped everyone we knew for information and managed to catch enough Beaver Lake crappie on marabou jigs in February and March to put on a couple of fish frys. John still wasn’t satisfied. We shifted our attention to a fish that we knew very little about- walleye. Table Rock Lake, near our home has a nice population of these tasty creatures, but they have a reputation of being very difficult to catch. Again we studied up on our quarry and tried to get information from local walleye fisherman. We made five late afternoon and early evening trips during March and managed to capture a total of 12 walleye. We caught most of our walleye on 1/16 oz. marabou jigs and 1/8 oz. P.J.’s grubheads attached to 2 ½ inch rainbow trout-colored soft jerkbaits. We jigged our baits off the bottom using four pound line in the area of the Hiway 62 Bridge across the White River below Beaver Dam.
John caught the only two female walleye. The largest was in the 12 pound range. We kept the males and boy were they delicious. You guessed it- we released the two females. Oh well, I guess John’s finally ready for catch and release bass fishing again.
Jim Hall
April, 2003
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