Wow! Renting a cypress board boat! That is a great mental picture of adventure. I have been on a wooden board boat in South America. That was a “pray without ceasing” moment.treefarmer wrote: ↑Sun Mar 29, 2020 5:31 pm Well Tony_Wood, getting back to last evening's discussion on fishing for Crappies/Speckled Perch.
I don't fish as much as I used to. I had a job for 3 1/2 years that kept me on the waters of Orange County Florida right before we moved to the Panhandle. I used to enjoy fishing for Crappies, they were called Specks most of the time in central Florida. They are several names for the common Black Speckled Perch found in our waters. Papermouth is one that some of the old folks used to use and that is obvious if you have fished for them very much.
My 1st recollection of fishin' for Specks was as a very young boy. My dad would rent an old Cypress board boat at the Black Hammock Fish Camp next to Lake Jesup, part of the St. John's River system. We would fish with what he called live Missouri minnows drifting across the lake in the cooler months. Pop got the idea of trolling with a tiny jointed MirrOlure, this resulted in me getting to operate the "kicker", a small Elgin outboard motor. Idling along would get boring and every now in then I would goose the throttle a tiny bit, Pop would give me the look, I would slow back down and he would hang a nice Speckled Perch. We finally realized what was going on.
While I was working with the Pollution Control Agency, I had the pleasure of working with an old retired Air Force feller. He taught me how to make cheap lead headed jigs to use in catching the Specks when the season was right. We had found large numbers of big Crappies near a flood control structure but the rocks/boulders, whatever they are, around the dam were an easy place to lose the little jigs we were casting into the fast flowing water. We would buy yellow No-Alibi jigs on a card at the bait shop and then go catch fish till we lost the last jig to the rocks. This is when the homemade jigs came into play, saved a bunch of money back in the day. We fished with ultra light spinning outfits and the 4 LB lines. The light line worked best plus when it fouled between some rocks, it was a lot easier to break off and retie another homemade jig. At the time I didn't have "real" ultra light rod. One day at the local bait shop, I saw a used 4 Star Garcia Ultra Light, two piece rod some one had traded in. It was a beauty, it was a light action fast taper rod and I ended up with it by giving the shop owner a $5 bill and a couple of packages of venison sausage. I still have that rod, it's been broken once and has worn out several tiny open faced spinning reels.
It was a real thrill to hook one of those large Specks in that fast canal water and finally get it to the bank and into the cooler. When they were big enough, we would filet them as in your picture. If they were small we would scale, gut and fry whole like a regular Bluegill.
There are some pictures in some old albums some where that would show some of our fish back in the day. Sorry I haven't located them.
Treefarmer
Great memories of childhood and time with your dad. I have some wonderful glimpses back with my father and grandfather. We mostly bass fished in those days. Lake Neely Henry, Lake Logan Martin, Lake Guntersville, and Weiss Lake.
My dad tournament fished, so I did a lot of fishing with my grandfather. Wish I had a photo or two from those days.
Thanks for sharing.
Our son and his boss caught a mess of them this weekend - fried them up and brought a batch to my wife and me yesterday. Sorry, no pics. 
Didn’t think of it. 
