Boat Docks Come Alive

I love October. Summer’s heat is gone, and most of the fishing pressure from sportsmen who are more interested in deer hunting than crappie fishing is gone. In my home state of South Carolina, we are in the grip of a 2-year drought that has some of our lake levels at record lows. At this time of year, crappie typically will move in around boat docks, especially those that have some brush or permanent pilings under them.

The drought is presenting a headache because some of my favorite docks are either high and dry or too shallow to hold any fish. As I have written about both in Crappie World and in my weekly outdoor column for the Seneca Daily Journal, low water is more of a problem for fishermen than it is for fish. Whitey Outlaw told me that, and he should know. His backyard in the Santee Cooper swamp became a pasture last spring, and he practically had to re-learn the lake.

Fortunately, this drought has a silver lining. It’s reducing the number of boat docks that are in the water. That means that almost any dock that still has decent water under it is holding a pretty good number of crappie.

My buddy Bill Brookshire and I sat in front of one of these deep docks sticking 4½-foot rods up under the dock and jigging fish out. I call these rods "bridge rods” because I typically use them to vertical jig around tight bridge pilings. The crappie seemed to adjust to the retreating water level by settling to the bottom and lying in some brush tops where they could ambush threadfin shad that were moving into the shallows. Why is it that water temperatures stay in the 60s for a month during spring and fly back through them in just a few days during fall?

Phillip Gentry
pgentry6@bellsouth.net

The Ultimate Crappie Boat

I have this discussion with just about everyone I meet who fishes for crappie. What is the ultimate boat for crappie fishing? I will admit that manufacturers are beginning to recognize that the watercrafts much change as crappie tactics change. I guess that’s why a lot of the tournament guys are moving from small aluminum johnboats to fiberglass bass boats.

With the popularity of tight-lining, many of these boats feature dual side-by-side pedestal seats in the front where two anglers can work a number of rods set in T-bars around the bow. I think that a lot of anglers are discovering that open-water crappie are a less-pressured fish for more than 10 months out of the year, and they’re looking for bigger boats with more stability in open water.

Why not go all the way with a wide, low, center-console boat to fish for crappie? I don’t want to upset anybody who has their boat laid out just the way they want it. Just like crappie baits, confidence is a big factor in catching fish, and that concept applies to boats.

When I traded in my old boat this past summer, I opted for a 21½-foot War Eagle Coastal Tomahawk. This is essentially a tough-as-nails aluminum bay boat that I asked John Ward to “tweak.” He added the dual sockets for tight-lining and a 4-stroke 150 Yamaha outboard for pulling crankbaits. Eight (yes, eight) trolling bars and 30 Driftmaster rod holders later, and this baby is ready to rock. You’ll be hearing a bunch more about this boat in future blogs.

Phillip Gentry
pgentry6@bellsouth.net

Pontoons Can Be Late-Summer Hotspots

I was re-watching a video my friend Russ Bailey had sent to me a couple of years ago. Russ hosts Midwest Crappie, and since I don’t get the show on any of my satellite stations, he mails me his shows on disk. On this episode Russ was shooting jigs under docked pontoon boats. After I saw this particular show, I decided to head over to one of my home lakes and give it a shot.

Russ’s explanation on the video was that crappie are drawn to the pontoons during late summer because they offer cover at night when the water starts to cool and shade during the day when the water warms up again.

On this day I also wanted to try shooting 1/32-ounce jigs tipped with Berkley Gulp! Alive minnows. The folks at Berkley sent me some of these to try and the 2½-inch smelt looked like a dead-on imitation of the threadfin shad that were moving around the lake.

What a day! Just as Russ explained, the crappie were under the pontoons. We found them really stacked under a small private marina loaded with pontoons that were tarped and tied for the season. The Gulp! minnows caught fish 5-to-1 to what my buddy was using until he switched over. The water was about 10 feet deep so we’d shoot under the bow end, count to five and start a slow, steady retrieve. For some reason, the bite would come just as the bait was about to clear the pontoon, which was fine by me. Some of these fish were better than a pound and a half, and I doubt we could have boated as many if they’d bit the jigs farther back under the pontoon.

Phillip Gentry
pgentry6@bellsouth.net

Introducing Phillip Gentry: Fisherman, Writer, Interpreter

When I was a toddler back in the mid-1960s, my parents were in the process of building a lake cabin on South Carolina’s Lake Hartwell. To keep me out of trouble, my dad built a chicken-wire fence to keep me out of the water. It took me awhile to figure out how to slip under the fence to get down to the lake, and that has been my life’s ambition ever since — slipping out of my daily confines and getting down to the water.

Some years ago I decided to become an interpreter. That is, I would find out all I could about the outdoors, particularly fishing, from the pros and experts and share what I learned with others. The day I met noted Pickwick crappie guide Brad Whitehead, he told me I wasn’t like other writers he knew. I took that to mean he recognized I was a fisherman first and then a writer. He was correct.

I’ve always been a crappie fisherman, even though I mispronounce the word. My goal with this blog is to keep interpreting. We’ll compare the way ya’ll do it and the way we do it, and we’ll all be better off in the end. E-mail me if you have some crappie ideas you want to share.

Phillip Gentry
pgentry6@bellsouth.net