All About Pocket Knives

Awesome pic OH!

Thanks gents! Appreciate the comments. OH

At my grandsons home we spotted a couple turkeys....then we spotted a Mallard duck walking towards us...I said to Peyton, get down, don't move.

He whispered, "Can I do a duck call Poppy?" I'm like sure, whatever....like he knows how to do a......"wait, do that again Peyton!" I was impressed
by his duck call.

For some reason (maybe my fellow duck hunter friends will know) the duck wouldn't take flight until we got within like 5 ft of it. I'm pretty sure this is a female. Was she pregnant? Looking for her nest? I snapped a pic as it took off then came right back down.

Just got back from a spring Crappie fishing trip at Lake Shelbyville. The lake is a good spot to fish for Crappie, Bass, Walleye and some other species. My buddy and I caught over 100 Crappie in 4 days of fishing. We kept the good ones allowed by regulation. The cleaning table shot is from one day, you are allowed 5 under 10" and 10 over 10". The big one was 16", which is truly exceptional. Normally you see 10" - 12" for the overs.... and we only keep the 9-1/2" - 10" for the unders.

This is what one of the coves looked like and the boat is friends of ours that we were fishing with.

NICE Crappy score.. You got me thinkin I an real hungry!!!! SUPER!!! John

Check six, Thats a nice haul of White Perch


Larry

My favorite fish to eat.

TripleF wrote:My favorite fish to eat.

Scott, we had a huge fish fry last night. It was SO GOOD, I didn't need tartar sauce or ketchup. Shore Lunch breading and a deep fryer was all that was needed. We had a feast.

Mmm Mmm,, nothing better.

Ray

That's a good days fishing, Dave. How did you go about catching them?

Here's a couple of turtles sitting on some old float. I think turtles are some of our finest creatures.
Unmolested and in a pristine environment, they must live a pretty nice long life.

Way to go CS! I love me some fried crappie.

That was a Crappie catch! I love fried fish ... I have had fish cooked all kinds of fancy ways at restaurants and it may be good, but at the end of the meal I think it would have been even better if it had just been rolled in cornmeal and fried hot. I have experimented with various recipes myself and still think that nothing beats fried.

Amen, Mel! Fried fish is hard to beat.
Treefarmer

[quote="CheckSix"]Just got back from a spring Crappie fishing trip at Lake Shelbyville. The lake is a good spot to fish for Crappie, Bass, Walleye and some other species.

Would that be Central Illinois? I hail from Mattoon.

Dinadan wrote:That was a Crappie catch! I love fried fish ... I have had fish cooked all kinds of fancy ways at restaurants and it may be good, but at the end of the meal I think it would have been even better if it had just been rolled in cornmeal and fried hot. I have experimented with various recipes myself and still think that nothing beats fried.

I agree too.

Fresh fries crappie, fried taters, hushpuppies or hoe cakes, and some green onions straight from the garden. Thats about as good as it gets.

Thanks guys! It was my first time on this lake and yes! located in central IL. I am told what we did was average, except my buddy got that 16" fish. That was exceptional. There is a lot of submerged structure, i.e. tree falls, stumps, etc. You find these, anchor just off of it, then I was fishing with a slip bobber and a minnow set to the right depth.... and another rod set up with an appropriate Crappie artificial lure. A fisherman is allowed 2 poles to be in active use at any one time. So, I was fishing a live bait and an artificial, searching around the boat with the lure for other structure. If I couldn't find any with the lure, I would reconfigure that rod to a slip bobber setup on the known submerged structure.

We noticed in the morning, the bite was in progress and just about every cast or fresh minnow put out, would get a hit. Then in the early afternoon, it would slow down. Then pick up again near sunset.

Every day, we would have our unders done in the morning and a few of the overs. The afternoons were spent looking for the overs to try and get our limit. My biggest fish in 4 days was a 12", which is considered a nice one. The 16" is off the chart.

And I agree with all of you! Fried panfish is really hard to beat. Fresh Walleye is really, really good also! Northern's with the Y bone filleted out is also very good.

I love fried panfish. I like them fried up in such a way that I can just pick them up and eat them, no fork required. I even eat the fins and tails. If fried properly, it's like eating fish flavored chips.

When I was in college, several of us went bank fishing on a large pond owned by the local pharmacist, Mr. Boozer.

One of the guys caught a five lb, four ounce crappie fishing from the dam. He had it weighed in one of the University's cafeteria's kitchen and frozen so he could take it home the following weekend. It would have been an Alabama State record catch. I have no idea if he ever tried to register it with Alabama Fish and Game.

Most likely not, because that crappie still surpasses the current Alabama State record by a pound.

That 16" crappie is a very nice fish.

You should come fish in Alabama. Our catch limits for crappie is 30 fish, nine inches or larger, per person.

I've been involved in the cleaning of almost seventy bluegill before. Makes catch and release very attractive. We have a 50 fish limit per person on them.

Charlie

Charlie,
The fish fry on Tues night, was like you said... a batch was fried and put on a big plate, we would finger grab a few fillets and just eat them like finger food. Rinse and repeat. It was delicious.

I was told that on average, Lake Shelbyville gives up 1600 Crappie per day.

After fishing all day and tired, the fish cleaning chore was not the highlight of the day. But we got it done.

Somebody used to make a cylindrical basket that when pulled behind a boat on the way back to the docks after a day of fishing, would spin and essentially scale the fish. That's above half the work of cleaning a mess of fish.

Charlie Noyes

My first experience eating freshly caught fish was 50 years ago. I was working as the bartender at an exclusive fly in fishing lodge on the north shore of Great Slave Lake, N.W.T. It was summer so nearly 24 hours of daylight. One evening one of the fishing guides asked if i wanted to join he & others going to an island for some fish. I was keen to go and hopped into the open boat. It took almost an hour to reach a small rock outcropping, aka "the island". There were other guys there already with a fire going and just caught fish wrapped in leaves, and lying in the coals.
Then suddenly it struck me: i was the only non native person there, everyone else was local, mostly Dogrib Nation. And i, the only white guy was 'co-habiting' with Lisa, a young native woman. Was this a 'set-up' ? I suddenly realized that i could be killed and dumped into the lake. Nobody else knew that i had joined these guys.
However nothing of the sort happened. These local guys were helpful & generous. They showed me how to cut a forked stick, hold it and use your thumb and the fork in the stick to scoop out the still steaming fish.
kj

when they were building the Lake Shelbyville Reservoir we rode our small motorcycles around the bottom once. 50 miles of shore line. They even had to move a cemetery. Some of the man made lakes in the area have had 20 lb. plus size catfish cought. That is why all of the tree stumps etc. in it and they usually open the dam and lower it for the winter. Very few natural lakes for the cities to get water from. Nice catch.

Great stories kj and mrwatch!

We noticed Lake Shelbyville was down about 3-4 feet from normal. The guys with me that had been there before, said it was the lowest they'd seen it at this time of the year.

More fishing in the near term...

I'm going to Table Rock Lake in the Ozarks in June. It's near Branson, MO. I'll be taking the motorhome and parking it there at an RV park on the water and already have my fishing booked with 2 different guide services for the week. TRL is one of the top 10 Bass fishing lakes in the USA. Can't wait!

Looking forward to those reports Dave! Good luck!

With the recent gift from Garry (Quick Steel) a Daisy Red Ryder BB Gun, I set up a vintage NRA target and we poked some holes in it!

Thank again my friend!!

Looks like big fun Scott!