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Taking the offense as angler
If you are like me, you may find it difficult to sit in one spot and concentrate on a single focal point for more than a minute or two.
I’m not exactly a restless soul, but it is difficult for me to switch into idle. It’s difficult, that is, if the activity is something other than fishing.
For the most part, I am an offensive fisherman. I much prefer running and gunning, pitching to targets and covering a lot of aqua-acreage in a typical day on the lake.
But I also can sit for hours in one spot and stare at a quill bobber dancing on the ripples while imaging a school of crappies that soon will discover my bait. We are in the midst of the prime season for crappies, and bobber-watching soon will be the sport of choice for many Youngstown-area anglers.
It’s not as though there is no incentive for the seemingly tedious work of gazing for an hour or more at a bobbing piece of plastic.
Crappie anglers love many things about spring, including the fragrance of the marshes near their fishing spots, the chirping of the chorus frogs we know as spring peepers, the budding willows and the plunge of their float when a hungry crappie can no longer resist temptation to eat the bait.
For most who fish, our first experiences on the water involved watching small round red-and-white bobbers get pulled under by bluegills. Soon, we added skills that tricked crappies. Those tactics required a bit more precision and sophistication — not so much because the crappies were harder to fool as that they tended to locate near places where careful presentation is necessary.
We learned that a neatly cast bobber and minnow, a lob that landed within inches of a clump of willows or a row of reeds, would result in a bite as soon as the bait floated into the visual range of the crappies we knew lived there.
And so it was that bobber-watching became an entrancing activity. Even when the fish weren’t biting, we knew we had to watch for the moment when the float dunked under because even a few seconds of inattention might result in missing the day’s best bite.
Staring at that float is mesmerizing. There is the sparky glint of the sun off the water. There is the natural cadence of the ripples’ audio and visual effects — the water lapping in perfect synch with the dancing bobber. And there is the hope only an angler can understand, that a big crappie is eyeballing the minnow and soon will decide it’s time to eat.
Bobber-watching really is the essence of fishing for many anglers, and today is one fine day to get some more practice.
Walleye Madness at Mosquito
A rookie team of walleye pros nabbed a berth in the 2014 Cabela’s National Team Championship by virtue of their fourth place finish in the Walleye Madness Tournament last Saturday on Mosquito Creek Reservoir.
Brandon Morrison and Chris Romano weighed in a 14.7-pound limit catch of walleyes and qualified for the Cabela’s championship as the highest-finishing team entered in the side competition that awarded the berth. This is their first year of walleye tournament fishing.
Winners of Walleye Madness were Chad Fenstermaker and Phil Berg, with 18.05 pounds. They earned $2,050 for their day on Mosquito, including the bonus for the biggest fish, a 6.6-pounder.
Tournament director John Csizmadia said entrants in Walleye Madness events can earn the opportunity to qualify for the national championship if they sign up for the side competition. Next event is May 25 on Lake Erie out of Huron. For information, call Csizmadia at 330-881-0994.