EP 575. Catching Spring SLABS!

Ramsey Russell: Welcome back to MOJO’s Duck Season Somewhere where today it is warming up outside, spring is in the air, pollen is heavy and the crappie are spawning right here in Central Mississippi, joining me today is Mr. John Blake Riddle, Little Riddle as the world knows him. The mayor himself, Jimmy Dean and his lifelong buddy, Mr. John Harrison. How you man doing today?

John Harrison: I’m doing fine.

Jimmy Dean: Doing fine. How are you doing?

Ramsey Russell: I’m doing fine. Man, I tell you what, I’m glad to be here, I had some fish today, I caught a bunch of dies pretty crappie up here on this lake using a little riddle jig, I never had Livescope before, it’s easier said than done, that was like playing a video game, I enjoyed that, but I think, John, how many years of fishing experience on this lake is represented just in this room with you 3 of you all? 120, 130 years?

Jimmy Dean: Yeah, at least, 120 or 130, be a hundred between just me, John and I.

John Blake: We don’t want to tell our age.

Ramsey Russell: Huh?

Jimmy Dean: Well, I didn’t tell them your age.

John Harrison: Just say, a lot of years, yeah over a 100.

Jimmy Dean: You can’t have it because you are 70.

Ramsey Russell: For folks listening because this is a duck hunting channel, but I’m going to tell you what, I am a other white meat fan, I do love fried crappie, for folks who don’t know what makes spring such a special time to chase crappie? Anybody weigh in?

John Harrison: Well, springtime I guess people’s been shut up all winter from hunting and warm weather seems like just brings out everybody, it’s when all the hunting seasons are over with it at the end of February, it’s time to go to fishing and Grenada Lake is one of the most popular lakes for catching big crappie anywhere in the United States. I mean it’s – for years it’s been known home of the 3 pound crappie, that’s what it’s known for. But the fishing here is just it’s phenomenal, it’s unbelievable. I mean I have clients I’ve been guiding a long time for 20 something years and just people from all over states, everywhere come here now just because it’s Grenada Lake and used to in the springtime and Jimmy can tell you just be a few locals here in the spring, but through the years words got out about these big crappie here and it’s just everybody comes here from all over the world, people come here fishing.

Ramsey Russell: 25 years ago, I lived right here in Grenada for about a 3 year period and you knew when the crappie was spawning because you come up there to the main crossroads in Grenada and any direction you look, everything from pickup trucks, a little Toyota Corollas was pulling whatever make fashion or model of boat they had, fishing poles hanging out the window, son, the crappie was biting. Is it still like that up here?

John Harrison: It is. Like now, I mean, you can ride down the Old Highway 8 on either side, going to Redgrass or buck putter and you see people, if you’ll just notice, look at the cars parked on side the road, they just lined up the road fishing off the side of the road with, not necessarily jig fishing or just I don’t call them old timers, but just people in general out trying to catch a mess of crappie with a bucket of minnows and a cane pole.

Jimmy Dean: Yeah, just old school fishing. That’s where I –

John Harrison: Just old school jig fishing, that’s the way we grew up.

Jimmy Dean: Well, I just –

John Harrison: Say it.

Ramsey Russell: Well, Jimmy Dean, why do they call you the mayor?

Jimmy Dean: I’m the mayor of Shake Rag where I live, about an hour east of here, east of Grenada.

Ramsey Russell: Okay. A legitimate mayor, not a fishing mayor.

Jimmy Dean: Not a fisher, just they called me the mayor, everybody around home, my home where I live, I stay on top of everything, I give everybody too much trouble.

Ramsey Russell: How long have you and John Harrison been hunting, fishing together up here?

Jimmy Dean: 50 years.

John Harrison: A long time.

Jimmy Dean: 50 years.

Ramsey Russell: And how’d you all get started?

John Harrison: Just met through, I mean, his daddy was one of the best jig fishermen, back then it was Harry Davis and Bobby Beard, if you wanted to know just a couple of the best jig fishermen on this lake, which we didn’t know too much about jig fishing, but I can remember right down the road here where the dry dock is now, Clifford Martyr had a store there and you could rent a boat for $2.

Jimmy Dean: That’s right.

“we just tell Harry to pick us out some colors and he’d asked us where we was going to fish”

John Harrison: And if you had $5, you get a little motor to go on it, no trailers, you just had to load them up yourself and spend the day fishing and bring them back and check them in, check them out. And then later on, Harry got that store and we didn’t know about jig fishing and I’d go in and you just have Slater’s jigs, just in those little old plastic boats all down through there and I just – we just tell Harry to pick us out some colors and he’d asked us where we was going to fish, what part of the lake and we’d tell him and he’d get 3 for a quarter or something, we’d give him 50 cents, he’d pick us out 6 or 8 jigs, he’d give us 2 or 3, but he’d pick out different colors and most of the time it was always an old orange and black with a pink head, and then Mr. Bobby and Jimmy Dean, he was a blue and black, I remember every time you seen him –

Jimmy Dean: He was till the day died.

John Harrison: And he’d catch more fish than anybody in that lake down there, I’m telling you, him and Harry was this –

Ramsey Russell: Was he the Indian or the era?

John Harrison: Harry was a Indian.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, but it was the jig color what made him to fish catching the son of a gun on lake.

John Harrison: I don’t know how they – I mean, I don’t know how Mr. Bobby and him learned the technique, they was older than I was, so I don’t know, we just, whatever they told us, we believed them because we’d go catch 2 or 3 and when we’d come to that store every morning, they’d keep a cooler outside and I’d raise that cooler lid up and just be level. Back in those days, the limit was 50 and those coolers would just be the – you couldn’t even shut the lid, we’d just be amazed with that, where they caught him from –

Ramsey Russell: How old would you have been then?

John Harrison: I was probably 13, 14, we wasn’t old enough to drive, but we drove anyway.

Ramsey Russell: I remember those days.

Jimmy Dean: We’d walk around the banks, how I started, I’m sure I think John did too, with a cane pole and a minnow.

John Harrison: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Jimmy Dean: We started out around Chickasaw, maybe, Redgrass and my daddy would take me around them banks and he said him, boy, stick it in right here and you stick, a lot of people call them stoppers, I call them corks stoppers or whatever and just a crappie, big crappie hook in a minnow and you’d walk around those banks and just wire them out. I’m talking about fishing a foot deep, especially this time of the year in the spawning season, that was always the best time to catch them.

Ramsey Russell: Who would – back up just a little bit, Jimmy Dean. Tell me more about your daddy, who was your daddy?

Jimmy Dean: Bobby Dean Beard. He was – He fished all his life and hunted all his life and we owned a business, a manufacturing company and when we wasn’t working, he was fishing or we was hunting. And he –

Ramsey Russell: Was crappie his thing specifically?

Jimmy Dean: Well, yeah, crappie was his thing. He loved to hunt, but crappie was really his main deal, he loved that crappie fishing, he’d fish all summer and I’m talking about – didn’t have umbrella or nothing in his boat when he was fishing out, when he’s fishing in his boat and he just get out there and get after it, old school fishing.

Ramsey Russell: How many times a week did you all eat fried fish?

Jimmy Dean: Oh, we – at least 3 times a week, we lived on them back in them days, probably more than that. I mean, now still to this day, me and my daughter Morgan and my wife and I have to catch enough fish for us to eat, but we either eat deer meat or fish 3 times a week right now and we love it. And of course, you cook it all different ways with deer meat, but the crappies it’s just a delicacy, it’s just – we mainly fry them the old fashioned way and I’m sure that’s probably the way most people like.

Ramsey Russell: Your daddy really taught both you all, indoctrinated both you all into Grenada Lake.

Jimmy Dean: That’s right.

John Harrison: Yeah. And my grandmother, she – they owned a bait shop, they opened it in 1967, where that’s about best I can remember and my granddaddy would go through the hills, I can remember at Gums Crossing, deer hunting and he’d put me and her out at the end of the bridge and we would walk, I’d walk with her down to the river, cold, I mean, it was ice on the ground and she’d build a fire for me to sit by, I was just a little boy, but I can remember, she’d build a fire for me to sit by and she’d take a cart and a minnow and just pitch it out in that river with a – and it wouldn’t be long, she’d start catching them crappie and stringing them up and I remember my granddaddy would come back and park at the end of the bridge and blow the horn and he’d have to walk down there and tote those fish with a stringer, she’d have so many on that stringer back to the car, put them in that car and we’d come home. But back in those days, she run that bait shop and I still got some old newspaper clippings where it said, Gordon’s bait shop opened 24 hours a day for service, they lived in the back and it said, ring bell for service and she would tell stories of how people would come through late at night, trotlining and back in those days, people working the daytime, they’d fish a lot at night, trotlining and stuff in the springtime. But it just said, ring bell for service and I can remember that bait shop, it was over at Bruce and those old minnow ponds, they seined their own minnows and all. But I remember, well in the springtime we would, we look for cocklebur patches, water be backed out in these little fields and water stayed high a lot in the springs back then and we take what I just waved in my pants she had an old pair of black gumbos and we just kind of walk out and you see those cocklebur patches, big patches and you can see those cocklebur patches just wiggling all those sticks and you try to see one and pitch at men over there, bite and old black un had hit it they was in those cocklebur patches just in there getting ready, making those beds for those –

Ramsey Russell: The thing that strikes me about your grandmother, hearing your story about her was the fact that her bait store was open 24/7.

John Harrison: That’s right, 24 hours a day –

Ramsey Russell: She was dead asleep, somebody rung the bell, she got up and took care of it.

John Harrison: It said ring bell for service, yeah.

Ramsey Russell: And she did.

John Harrison: Yeah. They lived in the back and her, my mother and my family, they were, they lived in the back and they had their own minnow pools and –

Ramsey Russell: And all these years later, you can’t hardly find a fishing license in this town. And I know somebody this morning, with a 3 or 4 different places trying to find one.

John Harrison: Yeah, a lot of people, some bait shop places don’t open to 8 o’ clock. I heard of one just today, some people was trying to get minnows at 8 o’ clock and they weren’t open, I said, not open at 8 o’ clock, we wasn’t raised that way. I mean –

Ramsey Russell: Well, they used to Jimmy Dean, he don’t wake up till late on fishing mornings no more.

Jimmy Dean: I might wake up early, but I don’t go to lake.

John Harrison: Well, he’s got all day to fish now.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, Jimmy, he just told some of his fondest memories of his grandmother. What are some fond memories you got of fishing with your daddy? What did he teach you? Let me just ask you this way, what did he teach regards fishing or what memorable life lessons did he teach you on the lake about fishing that would relate to fishing?

“I can remember a bunch of things that he told me”

Jimmy Dean: Well, he taught me, first of all, he taught me how to work. You had to work to get what you, to have anything and when you go get ready to go fishing, he always said work and he made sure that I knew that work come first and then, but when we wouldn’t working, he said let’s go fishing or hunting and talking about a memorable, I can remember a bunch of things that he told me. He told me one day, son, he said, let me tell you something, I was fixing to move from this one place to another, I caught 2 or 3 and I think he had caught some, I said, daddy, let’s move, he says, son, let me tell you something, you don’t leave fish to go find fish.

John Harrison: That was – that saying went on and on with old people, my grandmother would tell me the same thing when we were –

Jimmy Dean: But you know what, that comes to be true.

John Harrison: Yeah, they said don’t – and I’ve heard other people say same thing that their parents taught them, you don’t up and leave fish to go find more fish.

Jimmy Dean: Exactly.

John Harrison: And this old lake used to be full of brim down here, it’s not hardly none here now, but used to in the summer you go down and see brim beds and you catch big old bream, big as your hand and I remember a lot of times I was wanting to move somewhere and Grandma would say she had that old straw hat on and she could smell them, they could smell them.

Ramsey Russell: Well about yesterday, I can smell them fish.

John Harrison: She smell them bream and she smoked them old Virginia Slim cigarettes, she’d hold that cigarette out and hold that head back, I can see her right now with that big straw hat on and she could smell them and she’d go straight to them. I mean, just, she could find them. Yeah, but we never leave till we fill that box up with big old brim. But she just always taught me they smell sweet, like watermelons or something sweet. She can find them I never was that good at them, but she could.

Ramsey Russell: I can smell a bream bed.

John Harrison: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: I can smell crappie when they all moved up in the trees.

John Harrison: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: I can’t make them bite, but I can smell them.

John Harrison: You know they there are anyway.

Jimmy Dean: Something else my dad taught me a long time ago, too like this time of the year which, John, I’m sure agree with me, anybody knows anything about crappie fishing, this is probably the best time to catch them spawning.

John Harrison: Yeah.

Jimmy Dean: And back in those days I thought it was over with when I was wading knee deep.

John Harrison: Yeah.

Jimmy Dean: And got to where I wasn’t catching any, my daddy said, son, they went out a little deeper. So after the spawn, I got to where I’d go in May, even in the end of May, I’ve caught them on memorable day weekend, get out there about waist deep, the fish is still there, but they move out just a little deeper.

John Harrison: I was telling them earlier, before we ever started here, I’ve caught fish waiting here up till the – you ain’t going to believe it, up till the 15^th of May.

Jimmy Dean: Oh, I believe you, I’ve got memorable day.

John Harrison: Waist deep water.

Jimmy Dean: Waist deep.

John Harrison: It’s unreal and nope, you don’t see nobody because they, you went through a little low there about a week and nobody caught none, they said the spawns over.

Jimmy Dean: That’s right, they all, everybody leaves and –

John Harrison: Come around, come back in waist deep water or nearly over your waders and you just go out when the limit was 30, I remember a lot of days we’d be out by 10 o’ clock, we limit out.

Jimmy Dean: And a lot of times they’d be out there after the spawn, like 1 year, memorable day weekend. I can remember, I still got pictures of them here somewhere. But I’d have to stand, I was almost over my waders and standing up and I’m not very tall, 5’11 and I was catching big crappie just out there, that’s how deep they were from – and I was using a 10 foot pole, a 10 foot wading pole, I was wading it, bait over my waders and the fish was there and they was there during the spawn earlier that I was catching them knee deep or less.

John Harrison: Same places.

Jimmy Dean: Yeah, same place. That’s right.

Ramsey Russell: Where’d you all meet my buddy, Little Riddle? How does Little Riddle fall into the fold here?

John Harrison: Jimmy’s probably knew him longer than I have.

Jimmy Dean: John Blake come down, he’s – What’d you do? You called me one day and look, now we, you knew one of my buddies had asked me about Paul.

John Blake: That’s it, I was looking for a duck hole and –

Jimmy Dean: He was looking for a duck hole.

John Blake: Jimmy Dean’s got them ducks, I’m telling you.

Jimmy Dean: And I told him, I said, well, I’m the mayor down there around Chickasaw County, that’s where he was asking me about.

John Harrison: He’s wanting to know something about some home.

Jimmy Dean: If you want to know anything down there, I want to do anything, you got to go through me.

John Harrison: That’s the same way when I’d go there.

Jimmy Dean: And I was just kidding with him. Plus, I kid and care, if you don’t have fun, you ain’t doing no good either.

John Harrison: That’s right.

Ramsey Russell: First off, I didn’t know there were ducks in Chickasaw County of Choctaw –

John Blake: Oh, yeah.

Ramsey Russell: So, I’m impressed.

John Harrison: That’s the same way with me, with Mr. Bobby. When I went to Aberdeen, I didn’t have to worry about it, we’d have a tournament over there.

Jimmy Dean: Yeah.

John Harrison: I’d always tell Ken, I said, look, I ain’t worried about nothing. Mr. Bobby will tell me right where to go and I mean, he’d carry me to every spot over there and I fished for years over there, but I’d always go to Moxon Creek or somewhere where everybody else went. But –

Jimmy Dean: He knew where to go.

John Harrison: He knew where stumps was on the water and other people didn’t know about and he showed me where every one of them was, all the way up, down through there and I’ll never forget it, I think about him every time I go over there.

“How do you know that the crappie are beginning to spawn?”

Ramsey Russell: What signs do you all look for? How do you know that the crappie are beginning to spawn? And how do you know that they’re fixing to move into shallow water?

John Harrison: I always just look at it like this and I’ve caught them out here as early as 2 years ago or 3 when the water got up high on, March the 1^st, I went wading because it had been warm, when this water arises out here in this lake, the warmest water, I mean, waist deep water, will be cold. But the warmest water, as it rises, goes to the bank. The shallowest water, like knee deep water and anything over that, they’re not there, but that knee deep water, you fish about 5 inches deep and if you get about 3 warm days and 3 warm nights, that’s normally when whatever, from March the 1^st on, that’s when I start looking for them up on these banks.

Ramsey Russell: How shallow water will they actually get into? How shallow water will crappie spawn?

John Harrison: Well, I’d say 18 inches, I mean, I –

Ramsey Russell: Foot and a half?

John Harrison: Yeah, foot and a half.

Jimmy Dean: We’ve caught them, I’m sure John has too. You can see their fins, see them balling up.

John Harrison: I have seen them –

Jimmy Dean: A little over ankle deep of water.

John Harrison: Yeah. In Cowpen Creek, I’ve seen them on the side of that creek where it’s just old roots had washed out from those ironwoods, I’ve seen them, those old males, I’d look down at water to be real clear, you couldn’t hardly catch them, but they would come all the way to the top of the water and then they just float back down.

Ramsey Russell: So it’s water temperature, moon phase or calendar? What triggers them?

John Harrison: I just, I don’t never pay attention to the moon phase, I just go fishing. If I get to do –

Jimmy Dean: I do too –

John Harrison: That’s what I tell people.

Jimmy Dean: I think most of it, in my opinion is just, its the water temperature.

John Harrison: Water temperature. That’s 100% it.

Jimmy Dean: That’s my personal opinion.

John Harrison: Mine too.

Jimmy Dean: And I’m not no expert, I’m not a professional, but that’s my opinion.

John Harrison: Well, we got a lot of years in.

Jimmy Dean: We got a lot of years, we got a lot of experience in.

John Harrison: I’m the same way. Water temperature, if it’s in the 30s, you forget it, but if it’s 55, you start getting ready, when it’s 58 or 60, it’s going to be on.

Ramsey Russell: You talking about experience, that just reminds me of one of my favorite little sayings lately is, wisdom comes from experience, experience comes from a lot of bad mistakes. You all ever made any bad mistakes to gain that?

John Harrison: Yeah, all my life.

Ramsey Russell: In the context of crappie fishing out here on this lake, what are some of the notorious bad decisions you all made out there?

John Harrison: Putting in at South Graceport on a west wind and sinking on the boat –

Jimmy Dean: That’s probably the worst decision.

John Harrison: It took me about 5 times before I finally realized.

Jimmy Dean: It don’t take you many times to realize that, does it, John?

John Harrison: Yeah, and when the water’s low out here, you don’t wide open, I used to – I had a old polar craft boat and I had a 25 Johnson on it, run wide open even when the lake was dry and the last time I done it, I was running wide open and I hit a stump, broke it and I hit cattle and hit me in the back of the head, it come off, I said, that’s it, I’m through driving fast. Yeah, you learn from your mistakes out here through the years.

Jimmy Dean: Yeah, you hit a stump or hit one of them old roads, especially a lot of people, till this day, wasn’t too long ago, I saw a motor near by knocked off a boat and tore it all to pieces down there on the old highway down toward Redgrass.

John Harrison: Last week. Well, it was this week, maybe.

Jimmy Dean: People that don’t know this lake.

John Harrison: Yeah, I think it was Friday, I went at the duck ponds up there and you got to come around the end, you only got a 10 foot to come at in that levy. Well, I come around it pretty fast and 2 boats met me and they was just going to my left out there running pretty fast, and I thought, you ain’t going to make it far. And I looked over my left shoulder, it was about 10 foot apart. Both of them hit it about the same time and it’s only like 4 inches of water out there. You have to watch out here.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. A lot of people get smart quick, don’t they?

John Harrison: Yeah, Grenada Lake will educate you pretty cool.

Jimmy Dean: It will educate you, it need cost too. It’s cost a lot of people a lot of money –

John Harrison: Yeah, through the years.

Jimmy Dean: What I’ve seen in my lifetime, people knocking motors off –

John Harrison: A lot of highways was dangerous at any, if you don’t know what level, it’s dangerous.

Ramsey Russell: Well, that’s a boat. Owning a boat in general, about another thousand is what it stands for.

John Harrison: Yeah, bust out on those thousands –

Ramsey Russell: We going to bust out something on a boat. We’re talking about the spawn, how do males and females transition into shallow water? I mean, the males come first and they kind of get the house set up.

John Harrison: Right.

Ramsey Russell: When did the big females come in?

John Harrison: I think that water has to be around what, Jimmy, 63 to 62 –

Jimmy Dean: 62 or 63 that water temperature gets to the exact right temperature for the females come up. They’ll be out on out a little bit.

John Harrison: Yeah.

Jimmy Dean: And then when that water temperature, it’s got to be just right for the females and when they come in, they’ll come in and do their thing then they’ll be there a little bit. And then the males will come in and guard the nest.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

John Harrison: And these fish people catch them later on, they say, well, they ain’t through spun and they got eggs in them. Well, they’ll throw off, they’ll absorb those old eggs what little bits left they only put, I don’t know how many percentage wise out, but you’ll catch some in late May or June, still have little roll eggs in them.

Jimmy Dean: And some of them don’t spawn when it exactly they supposed to spawn. Some of them will spawn later. All these fish in this lake or any lake, as far as I’m concerned, they not going to spawn at the same time. A lot of people think, well, the spawn’s over, you’ll have to go back 2 weeks later.

Ramsey Russell: It could be a couple of stages of spawn.

Jimmy Dean: That’s right.

John Harrison: Rule of thumb here and these lakes used to be the big 4, big 3. You start on the far east end when they start and work your way toward the dam –

Jimmy Dean: Toward west.

John Harrison: That’s right, west on all of them, because these fish will be here in this section of it a week later and like, as you go progress toward that dam down there, like Sardis or Enit or Grenada, they’ll get on. I don’t know about Grenada, but I know the other lakes down around that dam those fish, I’ve caught them down there as late as the end April, they still blowed up with eggs, because that water down there is deeper and remain colder, it just takes longer for that water. Say here it’d be Perry Creek, I’ve caught them in in the spring in Perry Creek in May and you catch up on males just up on the bank like you did 2 miles up the lake, 1^st of March and females just still blowed up with eggs. It’s just because that water down closer to the dam just didn’t warm up as it’s just different temperatures don’t warm up as fast down there as it does on the upper ends of these lakes.

Ramsey Russell: This lake has a reputation for producing huge slabs, it always has, some of the biggest maybe in the country. What sets this lake apart from other places you catch crappie? John Blake Riddle was telling me a little bit of way in there, John Blake, if you want to, but he was telling me the other day, some reason he thought it would. But what as a consensus, why does this lake produce such big crappie? Has it always been that way back in Mr. Bobby’s day?

Jimmy Dean: It has been.

John Harrison: Oh yeah.

Jimmy Dean: Oh, it has been that way all my life.

John Harrison: All my life.

Jimmy Dean: I think vegetation remain –

John Harrison: I’ve asked the biologist and they said that’s what it is, that algae bloom, everything comes in here is just so fertile. Yeah, in your shed, everything out there is just – I mean everything comes down in here is just makes everything bass –

Ramsey Russell: It’s a fertile lake.

John Harrison: Fertile lake, bass, everything out there, it’s just that way.

Jimmy Dean: I listened to a documentary a couple of years ago on Grenada Lake and the way talking about the vegetation and all, I think I want to say that they said the crop in here grow 3 to 5 inches a year.

John Harrison: The first year we understand it, they grow 5 inches. The second year, 5 inches, which makes them 10 to 12 and then the third year –

Jimmy Dean: You catch a 14 inch fish, he’s 2 and a half, 2 or 3 year old.

John Harrison: About 3, yeah.

Jimmy Dean: Yeah, 3 year old.

John Harrison: And they grow fast.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right. Big old fish.

John Harrison: Yeah, they grow tremendously fast.

“One day he caught one the biggest crappie till this day that I’ve seen”

Jimmy Dean: You was talking about my dad, another memories that I got. One day he caught one the biggest crappie till this day that I’ve seen, I’ve seen pictures and all, but with my own eyes, it was caught. My dad caught one down here, weighed 4, 2 and the other one weighed 4, 3 around the same stump and we brought them up in my buddy, my friend Billy Ross on the store at that time at the bait shop and I saw it weighed, saw both of them weighed with my own eyes. And back then my dad, he worried about weighing no fish, we’d worry about throwing them in the grease.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, well, I saw a somebody brought out a fish this morning to show me, it was a 3 and a half pounder, wrapped up newspaper, something going to get mounted, I’m like, I could feed my whole family with that.

Jimmy Dean: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: And I would. I’d love to have a pitcher but I’d sure like to eat that filet.

Jimmy Dean: When you go down through there with that electric filet knife and it choking it down, that’s a big fish.

John Harrison: Now, years ago and Jimmy will tell you it was no fileting. You took us from spoon and you scale them, you fry, you eat them whole. You ain’t –

Jimmy Dean: No, we did not. I didn’t know nothing about filet and fish back in them days.

John Harrison: I’ve cleaned so many I couldn’t my hands that bleed nearly from scraping them and cutting the heads off and we didn’t ever.

Ramsey Russell: That still is a way. I filet bluegills this day and but I still like that’s how hard to take a spoon, cut the head off, gut them and I still – because it –

John Harrison: You get that good fish taste.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah. But the meat up on that bone is good.

John Harrison: It’s a different taste.

Jimmy Dean: Eat that fish whole. I like to catfish that way I love them especially those little white rivers about a pound and a half and score them for twice. Cook them whole, that’s the way I like those.

Ramsey Russell: Somebody said the other day that one reason, in addition to maybe just the overall productivity of this lake, part of it had to be with the way the core would drain it down to a winter pool and them crappies out there just eat the heck out of bait fish.

Jimmy Dean: Oh yeah.

Ramsey Russell: So, I mean because it’s all concentrate. Then the reservoir starts coming back up in time for them to get off into the spawning area where we’re catching them. That’s got to have something to do with it.

John Harrison: Well and then like I was telling you, sometimes I’ve caught them out here and they’d have 5 or 6 bait fish in them, it’d be 3 crappie and 3 shad about an inch long, inch and a half in June, they catch them crappie that’s made it an inch and a half, 2 inches was this year spawn. They just about 3 months old but they eat them. I mean they just gorging out on, especially in the fall of the year, they just gorge out on them.

Ramsey Russell: And the way the law reads and I’m up here, it’s got to be over 12 inches to keep it.

John Harrison: Over 12 inches to keep it.

Ramsey Russell: 10, 11 inch crappies an eater in my book.

John Harrison: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: I tell you. Especially with old spoon and –

John Harrison: Yeah, perfect eater.

Jimmy Dean: That’s the reason my dad quit fishing here. He didn’t want to throw away a knife? He likes them 9 inches.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

John Harrison: Yeah, that’s the perfect one to eat.

Jimmy Dean: I said, man, I’m going to just fish every day in the world and where John know where I’m talking?

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Jimmy Dean: He said, I’m going to stay over here, it was a 9 inch slot. He says, shoot, I can carry them home and eat all I want.

John Harrison: And he catch 30 of them.

Jimmy Dean: He did catch 30 of them.

John Blake: That’s why I live over there.

Ramsey Russell: Why’d they go from – I mean, now you said back in Mr. Bobby’s day, the limit was 50 and then I know for the longest time it was 20, now they’re down to 10.

Jimmy Dean: Well, it went from 50 to 30, wouldn’t it, John?

John Harrison: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: 30.

Jimmy Dean: Went from 50 to 30, then from 30 to 25 –

John Harrison: 25 to 20.

Jimmy Dean: 25, and then –

John Harrison: Used to be 15.

Jimmy Dean: Was 15 up till August –

John Harrison: Then 10.

Jimmy Dean: Last August.

John Harrison: Yep.

Jimmy Dean: Went to 10.

Ramsey Russell: I mean, 10 big crappies is enough. But I’m saying I wonder what was driving that? Just the pressure?

John Harrison: Just pressure, fish and pressure.

“I think it’s going to help in the long run, but it’s probably a couple more things that could be done that could make it better.”

Jimmy Dean: Just the pressure. The Wildlife and Fisheries and the committee and all, they just trying to figure out a way to – It’s so much pressure on Grenada Lake. And I think it’s going to help in the long run, but it’s probably a couple more things that could be done that could make it better.

Ramsey Russell: Because it ain’t just locals coming here. For as long as I can remember, folks from out of state, heck, I fished with this this morning with some folks from out of state that been coming down here my lifetime, maybe. What’s the furthest you’ve met or fished with somebody?

John Harrison: I had a guy last year that called and booked a trip with me from Alaska.

Ramsey Russell: Alaska. To come to Grenada Lake to catch crappie.

John Harrison: 2 days troll me in November here.

Jimmy Dean: They come, from I’ve seen them, talk to them from Canada. I mean, they come from all over the country, all over the world.

John Harrison: All over the world.

Ramsey Russell: How the heck do they hear about this place?

Jimmy Dean: And you regularly going to see Iowa, Michigan, Nebraska tags. You go down there right now, you’re going to see some of them tags.

John Harrison: I’ve got a client that’s been coming with me for 20 years, Bob Brinton from Michigan and he hadn’t missed a year. Well, last fall he missed, but he hadn’t missed a coming in like 20 years with me and he books a lot of days every year, but like he said, he don’t have no boat or nothing and this is the best place in the country to come catch big crappie.

Ramsey Russell: In the world of duck hunting, if we were talking about duck hunting, I would never have mentioned name lake. And I asked yesterday, Mr. Jim, I said, should we just not mention names? And it didn’t seem to matter, so if anybody listening is PO to me for mentioning the name, just remember I didn’t mention the name first. But I mean, everybody kind of sort of knows it’s on everybody matter for big crappie.

Jimmy Dean: There ain’t no secret. That is not no secret.

John Harrison: No. No secret.

Jimmy Dean: Well, that’s past what’s done been done, done on that part, as far as publicity and –

Ramsey Russell: Genie’s out of bottle.

John Harrison: Yeah, used to in old days, somebody asked, you catch any fish? You just look at them kind of funny. You wouldn’t tell nobody nothing.

Ramsey Russell: Well, now they ask you where you catch? Me say in the mouth.

John Harrison: Yeah, in the mouth. You didn’t – I mean, if you didn’t know these people around here, he wouldn’t tell you nothing. They did for secret. But now, I mean it’s all different now.

Jimmy Dean: Well, back in the older days, you wheat fish, you’d fish every day, all day. You could fish every day, seven days a week, all day long and you wouldn’t see very many locals, much less people out of state.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Jimmy Dean: And that’s just the way it was back in those days. But as time go, as time went on, it got so popular, you know catch, well 4 pound, they catch 4 and a half of them caught a couple 5 pound crappie out here I think.

Ramsey Russell: A pound and 3 quarter crappie is so such a beautiful fish. I mean, it’s hard to imagine something twice that big. It’s unbelievable. That’s a whole lot of filet.

John Harrison: That’s a big – let’s don’t talk just a second about – fishing pressure here and they’ve dropped the limit, but it’s not all just due to fishing pressure. This lake has filled in, of course they was, all these lakes was built for flood control. These lakes have all filled in over with erosion over the years. And anytime that the wintertime it’s all dry out there and then the water comes up, I can remember out from Chickasaw, that island out from Redgrass, Jimmy, it was acres of ironwood bushes out there in the summer and you could go out there and those bush ironwoods with just the top sticking up would be 12, 15 foot deep in there and he was just full of crappie. You didn’t worry about whether you was going to catch any, it was just a matter of how hot you was going to get catching them. Same thing on the schooner side, it was just bushes all over Torrance for acres and acres out there of ironwoods in the summer, water come up and get in there and it was just full of fish. The rivers, you could drive out to the river and put your boat in, fish all up and down that river. Well, now the rivers in the lake part down there, in places, they’re not 2 foot deep. I mean that the erosions done fill the lakes up, of course, they was only designed to last so many years. But I can remember when the old highway at Buck Putter first started showing, sliding my boat off, going out there and fishing in those bushes and it’d be 12 foot deep. Now when that old highway water comes off of it, it’s only about a foot deep. It’s filled in at least with erosion out in this flats out here, 12, I’d say 10 or 12 foot of erosion, dirt and all of our structure snags and all this stuff, it’s becoming a thing of the past I mean, it’s just rotted out over time.

Jimmy Dean: Yeah, you got the rivers running in the yellow bush and you got spoony, you got all the ditches and rivers, creeks running in and that plays a part in it too. What you talking about, John?

John Harrison: Yeah, and all that from Kowloon City and Bruce and all back up east and north come into this lake. It just silted in over time and it’s just a combination of everything, it has hurt our lake forest numbers I believe a lot. But it’s not just fishing pressure that has a lot to do with it, but losing our structure and all – these crappie years ago could go places that I can carry you places now that you wouldn’t imagine, way up these rivers for miles and miles of these old sloughs you could get in into and they’d be full of fish. Well, those fish raised and as the water get up, they just kept restocking the lake. But now they’re just a thing of the past, they’re all dried up just no water stays there.

Jimmy Dean: Back in them days they, the crappie in the lake would, a lot of them hadn’t even seen a jig or nothing, that’s what he’s talking about. They’d had places to go.

John Harrison: Yeah.

Jimmy Dean: So many places to go and shoot a lot of the fish back them days they wouldn’t even see a jig – They’d never seen a jig or people trying to catch them.

John Harrison: I’d say it was on in the maybe mid-70s before people, you see any jig fisherman much.

Jimmy Dean: Well, it was a long time before I knew what jig fishing was, my daddy taught me that all I knew was a cart to minnow.

John Harrison: Yeah. About late 70s, mid-70s, I was a kid you’d see a few fish, people on this old, we call it the old road out here going across above Graceport. But you – they had a little jewel, wouldn’t be a, little 10 foot one that telescopic B and M and made them and it was like a buggy whip.

Jimmy Dean: One of them is slides that –

John Harrison: Yeah. No reel or nothing on it, you just tie you 2 foot –

Jimmy Dean: Tie around on the end of –

John Harrison: Tie you 2 foot a line on the end of it, tie you a jig on it and you just go by every stump fishing and catch one on every, it was easy because there’s so many fish here, you’d made it look easy back then, but I mean it wasn’t nothing really to catch 50 of them.

Jimmy Dean: It wouldn’t, especially this time of year when they –

John Harrison: Yeah, really, it was nothing. I mean to catch 50 fish out there.

Jimmy Dean: Another thing, the climate, I believe climate control’s got something to do with it, I don’t want to, I ain’t getting into politics or nothing, but back in them days, them fish had bite, this time of the year, you could bite on it.

John Harrison: Yeah, it didn’t matter.

Jimmy Dean: It didn’t matter.

John Harrison: High wind, low wind, rain, shade, didn’t make no difference, moon phase, you was going to catch them, it did not matter. I mean, you going to catch them fish out there.

Ramsey Russell: Are the bigger crappie doing something different than the smaller ones during the spawn.

John Harrison: I think they’re more educated now than they was back –

Jimmy Dean: Yeah, really more educated –

John Harrison: Or I’m getting older one, but no, I think these Livescopes are educating them year after year more and more.

Jimmy Dean: I know, ain’t no doubt.

John Harrison: It ain’t no doubt in my mind they are, they getting smarter, they have to survive.

Jimmy Dean: But I don’t have nothing against Livescope, I’ve never Livescoped my life to last May, I started last May the 1^st.

John Harrison: Yeah, I remember.

Jimmy Dean: And I said I’m always been an old school fisherman, I was brought up that way.

Ramsey Russell: Yep.

Jimmy Dean: That’s why my dad taught.

John Harrison: Yep.

Ramsey Russell: What were you doing? How are you fishing all these years for the 49 year old, before last May, how were you fishing? What was old school out here on the lake?

Jimmy Dean: I’d be out there in my little old flat bottom boat on the front of it, started out with just a paddle, didn’t have a trolling motor.

Ramsey Russell: Sculling –

Jimmy Dean: Sculling. And then went from doing that to trolling motor on front of my little old boat. I had old V bottom boat when I first started, we called it a guard boat, one of them real V aluminum boats, deep V bottoms. But went to a trolling motor then. And that’s the way I fished all my life up until last May till I bought a Livescope and if I wasn’t in that front of that boat this time of year, I’d have them waders on, we’d be wading, just walk or pull up to a place, get in the boat, a lot of times even right now, like I drove down there the other afternoon, just stepped out of my truck and caught some big black crappie, some big black ones, I didn’t catch very many, but it was early a couple weeks ago and enjoy it. But that’s old school fishing to me, there’s nothing wrong with old school fishing.

Ramsey Russell: I was going to ask about wade fishing, is that a Grenada Lake thing?

Jimmy Dean: People wade –

Ramsey Russell: But I mean, do people wade crappie? I ain’t never seen nobody. Of course, I’m not avid crappie fisherman either, but I just, is that, everybody that crappie fishing goes out there and wades and waders?

John Harrison: Well, in some places –

Ramsey Russell: Stalked around with a pole.

John Harrison: Some places they do. Now, Grenada’s easy to wade because – and these lakes are because they draw it down and the ground gets hard, water comes in.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

John Harrison: You can wade, you can walk just like on this floor, but –

Jimmy Dean: In most places.

John Harrison: In most places, if you get to where the water stands year round, it’s going to be soft, you can’t – it’d be like duck hunting in a slough, you can’t wait, it’s mud up to your knees and them crappie don’t like that old soft mud, they like a hard mud.

Jimmy Dean: You’ll know it if you step off in it too.

John Harrison: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: When you’re targeting those bigger spawning fish are, when you’re targeting those spawning fish, are you looking for structure, cover, depth zones? What are you really looking for to find the X?

John Harrison: I look for warmer water in some places than other and if you – and I always use this as a rule of thumb. If I get out and I take my hand and I touch that water and it’s kind of like bath water, kind of warm, I know I’m in the right place and another good sign and they hadn’t started yet, if you hear these old carp out here in these fields and you hear all that sloshing, trust me, you go to them, get close to them because they know, I mean, they going to find the warmest water in the back of these in the back of these little draws –

Ramsey Russell: You hear the carp splash and you know.

John Harrison: Yes. Just like somebody –

Jimmy Dean: You go up there and hear the carp.

Ramsey Russell: Same reason them carps in there

Jimmy Dean: When you see the cottonmouths and the carp splash and you own them.

John Harrison: Them old carps is a good sign if you’ll listen, you can hear them a long way without sloshing, when you hear that they found that warm water.

Ramsey Russell: What’d you do, John? Now, there we go.

John Harrison: They found that warm water, so you’re in the right, I look for that and trash that’s washed up – Oh, Ironwoods, it’s blowed over, if you’ll look, I don’t, I’ve done it so long and Jimmy has, if you all walk into a thicket and there’s 50 trees there, I kind of look for something unusual, just a slick tree, I don’t ever drop my jig bite, But if it’s got a – I call it a little growth, a fresh new spruce, it’s kind of little tiny that comes up off the bottom of it, that male’s looking for something to – he’s looking for something like that, so I’ll look at that one and if I see a limb broke off, something the wind ain’t rocking, but if you take one that’s blowed over, I go straight to the roots, because them old ironwoods, when they blow over, if you’ll get at the back of them, they got old roots that goes everywhere.

Jimmy Dean: You can hardly walk across.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

John Harrison: Yeah. And he’s the one going to be there, if he’s a male in that area, he’s going to be around the roots of that and like those little cypress trees, you don’t necessarily have to walk up to the base of it, those things, if you’ll look sometimes 20ft out from that cypress tree, it’s got a grassy old root that comes way off of it and if you’ll see, you might see some floating out there, off of that way out away from it, they love that, them old males love to take, they love them those old –

Jimmy Dean: Yeah, those cypress knees too.

John Harrison: Yeah. Just remember, don’t walk straight to that cypress tree, because you’re going to start hitting knees, way bigger the cypress, the more the knees weigh 10 foot, 15 foot out from it and you just fish side to side because that’s brought them in there.

Ramsey Russell: Little Riddle looks like a minesweeper, when he’s walking anywhere out there, he’s always fishing out in front of us.

John Harrison: That’s the best way to –

Ramsey Russell: The 10 foot, max 4.

John Harrison: Yeah. And I tell people that go with me, you don’t fish, I kind of say by sight, just cause that looks good run over there and fish it, fish before you get to it. Go side to side.

Jimmy Dean: Yeah. It could be a little mound there underwater.

Ramsey Russell: Them 2 or 3.

John Harrison: Yeah. And if you catch one right here, he ain’t there by itself, just go all the way over here, fish all the way back over here, take you an inch or 2 at a time and fish slow. I’m telling you that, I’ve caught 15 males in a spot and I ain’t even made it to that cypress yet and they’d be back here away from.

Ramsey Russell: It but it’s like walking up to the edges, yesterday, we went on a hot tip and was fishing up in an area and just what I realized is okay, the tree line might be 10 yards that way, but there’s all kinds of wood and logs and stuff that’ll hold them fish so you better be fishing on the way to it.

Jimmy Dean: A lot of them would be a brush top under the water that you can’t even see sticking up anywhere and there’d be fish all in that brush top.

John Harrison: Yep.

Ramsey Russell: You talking about looking for carps and snakes, I got telling a snake story yesterday at dinner, the one in Boston, Illinois and folks up there don’t like, they ain’t as comfortable around snakes as we are.

John Harrison: I know.

Ramsey Russell: Have you all ever had any close encounters with snakes? Any snake stories that stand out?

John Harrison: I’m going to tell this. And I –

Ramsey Russell: Because yesterday I’m just easing along me and Little Riddle done walked through that cover a million times and he said, well, I’m going to go back over here, I said, nah, I’m going to make one more pass and I mean, silent as the wind was that snake when he was about a 4 foot water snake slid off and I just watched him and make a little drop.

John Harrison: I heard –

Ramsey Russell: I’m used to them, it didn’t freak me out.

John Harrison: They don’t bother me, I heard 3 or 4 slide off yesterday out of them limbs, but years ago, I was around there toward the Bird Island around there and there’s one little clump of trees on the left, it was cold and I never forget it, I had a little old camouflage hat on, it was iron, one ironwood blowed over and I walked up there to it and I don’t know how many I caught out from under, it was a water snake, it was, I mean, it was bigger than your arm, just laying up on the ground by the –

Ramsey Russell: He was fishing too.

“There wasn’t nobody down here and I threw pole went one way, my hat’s floating and I thought, what an idiot and I look back and there’s some fish they just, when I stopped, they just swam up, bumped me, I said, cow “

John Harrison: He never moved and I was just fishing, catching fish all out from under him and I filled my stringer up. It was cold, cloudy and I turned around, I seen another little old snake and I had that snake on my mind the whole time. I turned around, I started walking and holding my waders up, I was just about to go over them and them fish swam up behind me and when I stopped, that whole string of fish come up behind me and hit me in the back end, when they did, I hollered, I throwed my pole away one day, my hat was all it was floating and then after that I filled my waders up, I mean, I went plumb under, all I could think about, I had that snake on my mind and I thought he done swam up behind me and bit me and I done walked 10 foot away from him and I screamed and I thought, who could hear me? Well, there wasn’t nobody down here and I threw pole went one way, my hat’s floating and I thought, what an idiot and I look back and there’s some fish they just, when I stopped, they just swam up, bumped me, I said, cow –

Jimmy Dean: You talking about that, John? I’ve always had a fear of one, it worries me every time I’m waiting, one getting hung in my net, because I always let my net just hanging there.

John Harrison: Yeah.

Jimmy Dean: And that as long as I can look out there and see, I’m pretty much all right. But when I – when you get in trouble, in my opinion, is when you get on the dry bank and go to walking.

John Harrison: That’s it. Now, as long as you’re in that water, you are okay.

Jimmy Dean: Because I’ve walked up on them, with the mouth caught back, that cottonmouth and he’d be ready to bite you.

John Harrison: Stay in the water, you’re fine, but once you get out on that edge and that grass going back, watch where you put your feet.

Ramsey Russell: I used crew timber in the Delta, my biggest fear was not getting bit by one crawling, it was going up under them trees and I just – and that’s where you’d see them little old 7, 8, 10 inchers. I’m like, lord, don’t let one of these things fall down my shirt, my shirt collar, you know what I’m saying?

Jimmy Dean: I am talking about lot of rattlesnakes, too, in the Delta that is.

Ramsey Russell: There was lot of them, but they were harmless, I was just move them out of the way, they wouldn’t – Born and raised in the Delta, I do not like a cottonmouth, God help me, I just don’t like them.

John Harrison: I don’t like them either.

Ramsey Russell: I can live with any other snake, but I’m just, I almost want to go out of my way to kill every cottonmouth I see. And they just sitting there with a mouth open, saying, hey, don’t step on me, I’m going to bite you, but anyway, I just wonder if you all had any good snake stores.

John Harrison: That’s the best one I got.

John Blake: That’s a pretty good one.

Ramsey Russell: That’s pretty good, boy, I tell you. Mr. Bobby, you were saying, used to go that blue and black jig, he was a jig man.

Jimmy Dean: Yes, sir.

Ramsey Russell: You was out there back in the day with your cork and bobbering with that minnow on there. What’s your go to rig now? During the spawn, is it jig, minnows, minnows tipped on a jig, what are you doing out there now?

Jimmy Dean: My actual go to, my – personally, I just put a jig, I go to a skirt when a – different, mainly I use a orange or chartreuse head and just –

Ramsey Russell: Why is that?

John Harrison: History.

Jimmy Dean: Yeah.

John Harrison: People’s asked me for years, what’s your favorite bait? And I said, as long as it’s orange and chartreuse or chartreuse and orange, it don’t matter.

Ramsey Russell: It don’t matter.

John Harrison: No.

Ramsey Russell: That’s all you go to.

Jimmy Dean: Now I’m using minnows this morning and caught and you all caught some pretty good ones this morning.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, we did.

Jimmy Dean: I’ve never used minnows except for when I was young or coming up. Really, as long as I’ve been jig fishing, I’ve never used minnows, I just started the other afternoon and I –

John Harrison: But sometimes like now in this –

Jimmy Dean: And you pulled up on me one day, John and you was catching them, remember back in the summer, July or August and you was using minnows and I told you they wouldn’t bite, man, too good, you done caught, I think pretty close to the limit, if it not the limit, you had to –

Ramsey Russell: I mean, I felt like if you out there trying to catch fish, if a crappie ain’t biting a minnow, he ain’t biting.

Jimmy Dean: That’s my opinion.

John Harrison: Yeah. If he won’t bite that minnow, I had a friend of mine and he always told me he was a good jig fisherman, he’s passed on now and he’s – I always asked him, I said, you carry any minnows? He said, that’s insurance, you don’t ever go without that insurance.

Jimmy Dean: Well, I tell you, I’m like you just said, Ramsey, I believe that dearly, that if they won’t bite a minnow –

John Harrison: Yep.

Jimmy Dean: If you where the fish is and they won’t bite a minnow, I don’t think you don’t do much good.

Ramsey Russell: John Blake, you would tell me the other day your philosophy on colors and whatnot, you talking about the size, what is your thoughts on that?

John Blake: See and this sounds bad, that I own a crappie jig company and I’d almost say that color really doesn’t matter as much as profile of the bait, the size of the bait.

Ramsey Russell: Just something big enough, they say I got to eat him, he’s just too big a meal to pass up or is it just being at the visibility of the size?

Jimmy Dean: I got a deal, talk about that, I got a – I forgot about this, it wasn’t 2 or what, 3 weeks or a month ago, I was fishing and I done caught some nice fish and I got to where I couldn’t make them bite, I’d hit them in the head with it, bounce it off the nose and everything. So my little buddy here a little riddly diddly give me a 1/32^nd ounce, one of them, I’m always used to using 1/8^th ounce, all my life it’s all I’ve ever used, but I have got to 1/8^th now, he brought me some. But for some reason that day the bait I’ve been using, they just wouldn’t bite it and I put that little riddle jig on there that day and I don’t say it’s no lie, I got the videos of it, I sent them to him, showed him.

Ramsey Russell: It made a difference.

Jimmy Dean: Sometimes it’s, I drop it down in there, when I put –

Ramsey Russell: But it wasn’t the color, it was a size.

Jimmy Dean: Yeah, I don’t know if it was the color or the size really, to be honest with you, I don’t know –

John Harrison: You just knew they’d bit.

Jimmy Dean: Huh?

John Harrison: You just know they’d bit.

Jimmy Dean: I know they’d bit, but I know I wouldn’t catch it, I knew I wasn’t catching nothing on what I was been catching them on or what I always use and when I put that jig on there, I mean I finished out the limit just quick, I was gone.

John Harrison: Last year one time I was out there from Young’s fishing and I was fishing with a quarter ounce and I couldn’t get them to bite and I thought well, I’ll downsize, so I downsized to a 1/32^nd, still couldn’t get them to bite and one of my clients had came here and left some walleye jigs and I’ve caught, used these before.

Ramsey Russell: Big.

Jimmy Dean: Yeah.

John Harrison: 3/8. I said, well I put that 3/8 on there and never had a fish to turn it down and that water was muddy and it’s something about that 3/8 jig, big old jig with a 2 ought mustad hook and I’m telling you they were swallowing it, they wouldn’t touch that other. And tournament fishing, me and Jimmy, I fished a lot of tournaments, I keep about 3 poles in there and we keep them fixed up with different baits on them, we’ll have a big one and a 16th on one, a quarter on one and you can drop on this fish and drop on him with a quarter or 1/8^th and you can reach down and get another pole and drop on him with a 1/32^nd, a little old jig he can’t hardly see, as soon as he sees it, bam, he’s hit it. It’s like – or if they won’t turn that jig down, you take that minnow and just put it on a crappie hook and put your lead down about an inch from it where he don’t have to chase it and put that right on him and he’ll see that minnow, he’ll grab that minnow when he won’t touch nothing else. I mean, don’t, never be scared to try different colors or different baits or I mean, I have tried 4 different jig colors on one fish, knowing we needed to catch that fish to win this tournament and put the ugliest, I think it’s the ugliest jig you could color you could put on there and soon as he saw it, he’d bite the thing, some off the wall color you got stuck on there and he’d bite it, I mean, they not all the same.

Ramsey Russell: But there’s days they are going to bite and there’s days they ain’t.

John Harrison: Yeah, exactly.

Ramsey Russell: And I can remember I told this story in a boat this morning, but 30 years ago down in Texas fishing them little stock tanks on that ranch, man, we broke college kids and we’d go to town and the worms, we’d buy the plastic baits, lizard worms, whatnot, would just whatever was loose that they were thinking to throw away and we’d give them pennies on the dollar –

John Harrison: On sale.

Ramsey Russell: To the manager

John Harrison: Clearance sale.

Ramsey Russell: And thing about it is, if you threw out there in them ponds and they was biting a red lizard, they were going to bite a green worm.

John Harrison: Or a black one or anything.

Ramsey Russell: Or anything you had, whatever and if you – and there were days, if they weren’t biting one, they won’t bite none of them.

John Harrison: That’s right. Barometric pressure.

Ramsey Russell: What do you think about that? We were talking about that last night, I think it matter, I think that high barometric pressure hold up with that –

Jimmy Dean: Yeah, it does.

Ramsey Russell: Does the pressure appetite?

John Harrison: Yeah, everything’s affected by barometric pressure.

Jimmy Dean: I think that’s got a role in it, the barometric pressure.

John Harrison: Fish biting, turkeys gobbling, deer moving, duck hunt, everything revolves around barometric pressure.

Ramsey Russell: One of the best fishing days I ever had in a cow tank fishing for bass, little did I know, I mean I knew it was real low barometric pressure and turned out there was a tornado nearby, but man, them fish turned on. Boy, did they turn on and start biting.

Jimmy Dean: A lot of times stormy weather or any kind of weather that moves in will turn on.

John Harrison: Oh yeah, they will.

Jimmy Dean: The same way with deer hunting.

Ramsey Russell: For the crappies spawn, what is you all go to fishing pole and line weight, like what do you all just – what are you going to throw out there today?

Jimmy Dean: I’m using, today way I’m fishing Livescope and I’m using a 13 foot.

Ramsey Russell: Yep, 13 foot.

Jimmy Dean: ACC crappie stick.

Ramsey Russell: What if you was wading, what’d you have? 10 foot?

Jimmy Dean: I got it right there, I use a 10 foot B&M. That’s my wade and when I’m wading, I use my 10 foot pole and just put just a jig and just put out about maybe a foot of land, the other day when I caught those few, I didn’t have about 8 inches of line, 6 inches, that’s knee deep.

John Harrison: Yeah. If you think about it and I use a B&M 10 foot, 3 thumper, it’s a little stiffer, but if you’re in knee deep water, if you pull out 5 inches of line, I mean you’re going to be about perfect, he’s going to come up and get it. But that’s normally how here –

Jimmy Dean: Yeah, a lot of people think you got to, a lot of fishermen and I used to for a long time think that you had to be, if you’re fishing in 3 foot of water, you need to be fishing 2 foot deep, but what it is, the crappie, they come up to hit it.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, that’s right.

Jimmy Dean: If you fishing too deep, you fishing against your own self crappie fishing.

John Harrison: And I see numerous times, like yesterday, I mean –

Ramsey Russell: The bass will go down, but the crappie’s going to come up.

Jimmy Dean: The crappie’s going to come up to hit that bait, minnow, whatever you choose to use, in a shallower you fishing, the better off your odds is of catching it.

John Harrison: That’s right. Because if you got it down –

Jimmy Dean: That’s the truth.

John Harrison: Yeah. He ain’t got nowhere to go down.

Jimmy Dean: Exactly.

John Harrison: If he comes up, you set the hook on him, you set it up.

Jimmy Dean: He’s goes, like I always say, he go turn around, stand on them hind legs, I say other things, but that’s what we’re going to say today.

John Harrison: Yeah.

Jimmy Dean: You don’t want to be.

John Blake: Tell them Jimmy Dean.

Ramsey Russell: Wade fishing and string, looking for structure, looking for cover, looking for water temperature, water depth, other signals that tell you on them. But now this, this forward looking sonar has taken off, I mean, I watched it, I did it for the first time today and it’s a whole lot easier said than done but my takeaway note was I caught a few fish doing it and Little Riddle took over doing it and as I’m looking around some of them other boats that’s out there, man, out there in this big beautiful lake, there’s all this stuff and 2 men sitting in the front of boat looking at a computer screen, but it was mind blowing, like, my initial experience was I see the water depth on the left hand side and the distance on the right hand side. But you’re looking right to left, left to right, but that ain’t right to left in fishing terms, that’s forward and backwards.

John Harrison: Exactly. It ain’t no right and left.

Ramsey Russell: That took some getting used to, I’m trying to move it close to the day,

John Harrison: Left, right.

Ramsey Russell: I’m going right instead of forward. But once you could see it all put it together, it’s like, okay, I can see my little old bait coming down, I can see it right there by him and then I see him start looking up, I’m like, oh and I swear those crappies start to vibrate, glow or something –

Jimmy Dean: Shake a little.

John Harrison: It’s like they are electrically turn on, when they raised up, they go –

Ramsey Russell: You start holding your breath, because it’s like –

Jimmy Dean: Then you don’t move it.

Ramsey Russell: Because he fixed to bite it, it’s unbelievable. But I think just from reading some of the different social media pages among us, I think it could be a tad controversial, but I don’t see it having done it, I don’t see it as controversial, like, boy, you want to talk about controversy right now during turkey season? Is them folks out there reaping with in fact, now that’s a controversial topic in the world of turkey hunting. Do you all feel that sonars are controversial and crappie fishing or is it just going out catching fish like supposed to? And would you rather do that? Would you rather go back to wade fishing and going on pure instinct?

Jimmy Dean: I’m going to be honest with you. I love, I hadn’t, like I said, I hadn’t been doing it, since last May the 1^st, but I loved the Livescope, but I also loved old school fish.

John Harrison: I don’t know, I got mixed emotions. I got –

Jimmy Dean: It’s different opinions on that. Just you’ll ask one fisherman hence, but when I walk this door here, old schools, all I’m going to do all I like, that’s what I said all my life, I never would buy Livescope, but you go out there, look at my boat.

Ramsey Russell: It’s like I almost, I enjoyed what I did this morning, but I enjoyed yesterday just walking through there, not knowing.

Jimmy Dean: Yeah, it’s a not knowing.

John Harrison: Yeah, that’s a good part about that. I love –

Ramsey Russell: That kind of part, now I’m just fishing, it’s not knowing that I enjoyed about it. So I don’t really – and really, truly, in terms of mixed motions or technology or not, it’s almost, to me, it’s like – it’s why some folks choose to shoot the latest, greatest compound variation of a bow versus stick and string.

Jimmy Dean: Right?

Ramsey Russell: What is your, muzzleloader versus rifle or iron sights versus scope? It’s just whatever toots your horn or impacts you to do.

Jimmy Dean: Whatever’s out there.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, that’s the way I look at it. But I did learn something this morning, John was fishing, I was standing behind watching the screen because it’s pretty, one of those fish, when you see their head point up, looking at that bait and they just start to vibrate and start glowing, yeah oh, here he comes.

John Harrison: you’re going to get him.

Ramsey Russell: But John, he says, our whole lives we’ve been thinking that these fish are associated with cover and we didn’t catch a single fish this morning near cover.

John Harrison: Right.

Ramsey Russell: They was in 6 foot of water.

John Harrison: Yeah.

Jimmy Dean: I didn’t know –

Ramsey Russell: Between 2 and 3 foot.

John Harrison: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Just out there floating in the wide open, that’s crazy, I mean, just totally crazy. So it did change a lot of what I thought about fishing.

Jimmy Dean: I never would have knew that until I bought a Livescope.

Ramsey Russell: Do you all keep all the fish during the spawn or I mean, I told John when he invite me up, thank you, John, for inviting me up, but I said, man, look, I ain’t out there for dart and fart of it all, I like to hear grease pop. But you all are doing this all the time, I mean, is it catching, release? Do you keep some of them and let the rest of them go?

John Harrison: We do.

Ramsey Russell: I mean, is it about the fishing or about the catching.

John Harrison: To us it’s about the fishing. We don’t – we like to fish, we like to catch them, we like to eat them too, so –

Jimmy Dean: We love to eat them.

John Harrison: We ain’t going to run short on them and like me, I got a lot, so some clients come and they just want to catch a bag and they don’t – they throw all of them back and I’ve got some that come, they never keep a fish they just want to catch them, don’t matter –

Ramsey Russell: Just want to catch them.

John Harrison: Just want to catch them. Some come they, different ones every day, you got somebody different, they won’t take some home and eat them and you can’t blame them for that, they don’t get a chance to go much, they work all the time, so they want to put some –

Ramsey Russell: There ain’t hardly a finer fish than a crappie, right?

Jimmy Dean: He hard to beat.

John Harrison: He hard to beat.

Ramsey Russell: Very hard to beat. And now you said something earlier about those fish getting pressured and I never really thought about it, but do you all see that fishing pressure affects the fish?

John Harrison: Oh yes.

Ramsey Russell: Like today looking at the Livescope, so many fish would take off, well, I didn’t know if it was the motor pressure, I didn’t know if it was the splash of the jig.

Jimmy Dean: Like John said earlier, you could call it either one they pressure or educated.

John Harrison: Yep.

Ramsey Russell: Really, you think that, times have changed.

John Harrison: Oh, ain’t no doubt, yes sir. We used to fish with 10 foot pole out there on those trees, jig fishing all summer, you asked how we fished up to Livescope, well, I’d come down here in the summer and go out to those trees and just pitch bomb and let my jig go down, fish my way up and I was a spotter in the boat for a guy and I’ll tell you who he was, he was Josh Jones and he asked me, he said how – he’s a great Livescoper and he asked me, said how did you fish for them before Livescope? I said old school. He said well, how did you know there was a fish on that tree? I said I didn’t, I just fished from the top to the bottom.

Jimmy Dean: My daughter was fishing with me here one here a while back and you know how they run from you, John? They run like we say, they educate pressure and my daughter says, dad, why isn’t fish running from us like it? I said if somebody was after me 24 hours a day, I’d be running too.

John Harrison: Yeah.

Jimmy Dean: And they got that guy that got away with her there. I told her, I said, when you get chased that much, you go run.

John Harrison: And you can watch them now, sometimes when there’s no wind and you can pitch so much as a 16^th ounce jig out there, if it makes a little blue, they run –

Ramsey Russell: They’re gone.

John Harrison: Yeah, just that –

Ramsey Russell: They escape.

John Harrison: Yes sir.

Jimmy Dean: Exactly right.

John Harrison: They run from you and you run them down, but you ain’t likely to catch them. I mean you, some of them you run down and catch but after they get spooked and go to running, they pretty hard to catch.

Ramsey Russell: You had waded up into a place the other day and caught some fish.

John Harrison: And waiting on Kirby to get there. So he had 45 minutes and all my life I’ve caught fish right there at that boat ramp just to the left of that ramp, just – I’m waiting on him to get here, it’s knee deep water and I remember one time when they come a tornado through here, me and Stevie buddy there, they was waiting up on the ramp watching that tornado, man, he was going down below the fishing down in the lake. I said I’m going to walk down here and fish, he said I ain’t going down there. So I walked down there, limit was 15, I made me a little round, I come back, he said, well this tornado done went on, you ready to go? I said yeah, let’s load the boat. I done caught me 15 just right there, while that tornado, he was watching it going across Coffeeville, I went out there and them fish was biting, but they was at the boat ramp, that’s what I told them. I started and I caught my 10 just down that side there where you all fished right there and they wasn’t 5 inches deep all the way down that side right there.

Ramsey Russell: We got off in that corner and we got to the corner when we smelt, I mean you could smell them loud.

John Harrison: Yeah, that’s where I caught most of them in that little trash –

Ramsey Russell: And we meticulously worked every little nook out in the float, up on the stand and out the bottom limb, I even went out to the open thinking, well maybe, they’re blowing in from, just off the cover off to hear some, they didn’t bite, they were lock jawed. So we went back, had a cold beer and took a break and said, well maybe they’ll start biting a little bit, walk back out there, smell them again, they wouldn’t bite. I’m like maybe I’m holding my mouth wrong –

John Blake: Should have brought a few minnows.

Ramsey Russell: Probably should have brought a few minnows.

John Harrison: That fresh water that we got that rain, we got about an inch of rain, that fresh water come down that river and then that cut off right there where the boat ramp is, that fresh water, when I caught them, it was, it looked clean there but that water might have cooled off to a 3⁰ and they just shut their mouth, they was still there, they weren’t going nowhere, they just wouldn’t bite, you might took a minnow and just held a minnow in there, they’d have bit that minnow.

Ramsey Russell: If they ain’t biting it, they ain’t biting nothing, we didn’t have no minnow. I was walking out, I kid no Little Riddle about I should have got a slater jig up here.

John Blake: Do you how many times I’ve been in a boat with somebody and that is the first thing they go to? They say it was that stupid crappie jig, we should have brought some else, that’s the worst feeling I tell, I just want to cry inside of my heart I tell them, I say, well go put it on the rod, let’s try tell them.

Ramsey Russell: It didn’t matter this morning though, did it? Now we put them down with that jig this morning.

John Blake: Fun time.

Ramsey Russell: I was going to ask you all because I’ve also seen like, we’ve been talking about spawning, we’ve been talking about wading and sonar up here during the spawn, but when is it that folks are out here with those spider rigs just trolling?

John Harrison: That’s me in the summertime.

Ramsey Russell: Summertime under deeper water?

John Harrison: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: How deep water you in then?

John Harrison: Well, like last year I was catching them, Jimmy there –

Jimmy Dean: 12, 13 –

John Harrison: 10, 12 foot of water, yeah.

Ramsey Russell: They stay in that temperature gradient, don’t they?

John Harrison: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: When you’re out there on that big old lake hitting that gradient, do you just keep going till you find them?

John Harrison: Yeah, sometimes, I might start out, it’s kind of like June, maybe May and June, if it ain’t bad hot, I might stay in 10, 12 foot of water, but as it gets hotter on in July, I may go on down where it’s deeper. Say –

Jimmy Dean: You caught some while one day in 17, 18 foot.

John Harrison: Yeah, 17, 18, 20 foot of water down there fishing and they may not be that deep, they may be 8 to 12 foot suspended.

Jimmy Dean: But the water depth will be that deep.

John Harrison: Yeah, the water be that deep. They’ll suspend. and that’s another thing, I use that Livescope, you can tell how deep.

John Blake: Or a thermocline or anything.

John Harrison: Yeah. If that, if they’re pulling water, it’s not likely to be a thermocline, but if they’re not pulling any water that thermocline sets up, they going to be right on top of it

John Blake: Like using it like a curtain, they’ll sit in it –

John Harrison: Yeah, you’ll see that, you see that thermocline and you just – if it’s 11 foot, you fish 10 and a half and up

John Blake: There’s no oxygen below it.

John Harrison: Yeah, really ain’t nothing, he ain’t going to be below it for sure.

Ramsey Russell: Tell us about the biggest crappie you’ve ever pulled out his lake. What’s it and what made that day stand out?

John Harrison: I only want to IR, I’ve caught a lot of 3 20s, maybe 3 30s, I caught a 3 59 scale weighed one time jig fishing at buck putter, just out there fishing.

Ramsey Russell: How deep water was?

John Harrison: It was about 3 foot of water, lake was low and they was spawning up in that real thick –

Ramsey Russell: Those big 3 pounds would be females.

John Harrison: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: How big would the males get?

John Harrison: I have caught, I’ve heard of some over 3 caught, I caught in a tournament – one time, I caught a 2 93 and a 3 01 is the biggest male I ever caught my life, I caught it up there in Lost Lake trolling, that’s the biggest male I’ve ever caught.

Ramsey Russell: But on that, on some of those biggest female crappie you caught the biggest fish you’ve caught, where you out there, just sweeping in front of you looking for them, trying to find them.

John Harrison: I remember catching 2 one time at that Bird Island on around an ironwood bush and one of them weighed like 2 93 and the other one was a little over 3 and a guy, a client that with me had them both mounted, he was on the same ironwood tree, but very seldom in my life I ever caught any great big ones on a wading.

Ramsey Russell: How about you Mr. Jimmy? –

John Harrison: I’ve caught some 2 20S or something, but –

Ramsey Russell: What’s some of the biggest fish you’ve caught?

Jimmy Dean: As far as I’ve probably, I think I’ve caught a few bigger that I never weigh, because I never even –

John Harrison: Yeah, we didn’t think about it years ago.

Jimmy Dean: We didn’t it find it that way, I mean weighing fish, but as big to right now from the last couple years, the biggest one I think I’ve weighed that I’ve caught myself was 3 03, I caught one 3 04 and that’s the biggest and several 2 like John’s talking about 2 50s, 2 60. But the biggest one for me is like right now 3 04 and occasionally, I catch 2 or 3 fish a year of 3 pound or at least a little tad –

John Harrison: Its about 2.

Jimmy Dean: I don’t – But years ago it’s hard to catch 3 pound fish.

John Harrison: It is to scale to say, a lot of people look at them say that’s a 3 pounder, it might be 2 40.

John Blake: If you put it on the scale –

John Harrison: When you put it on that scale, it says 3.00, not 2 98 or 2 91, when you put it on a scale you could truly caught a 3 pound one –

Jimmy Dean: That’s the reason I put my scales in my boat. I carry him in my boat now just like the other day I had a guy, he going to weigh 3 pounds.

John Harrison: Yeah.

Jimmy Dean: I happened as one of my buddies and I said we think see what he weighs yet, I’m going to say 2 and a quarter, we put him on my scale, I said we think see what he weighs, he going to weigh 3 pounds, I said we’ll see, 2 18.

Ramsey Russell: Wow.

Jimmy Dean: Which is a big fish.

John Harrison: Yeah, that’s a crappie.

Jimmy Dean: But a lot of people like John’s talking about –

John Harrison: I bought weight.

Jimmy Dean: A lot of people don’t know what a 3 pound crappie looks like.

John Harrison: Yeah.

Jimmy Dean: Even though they think they do.

John Harrison: Yeah, she’s a giant.

Jimmy Dean: I’m not no expert, by no means and I’ve got it wrong a lot of times back in the day, I shoot, I think I’d caught one weighed 4 pounds, probably didn’t weigh but a pound and a half.

John Harrison: But back in them days, only thing we were, we put them in a cooler, we waited to get the next one, we didn’t, we just know we caught a bigger.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, that’s right. I wonder if there are a lot of like, I mean, do people trophy fish? Like, I know everybody wants to trophy fish for bass, are people actually trophy fishing for crappie?

Jimmy Dean: I’ve some people just go after that big –

Ramsey Russell: I just want big old fillets.

John Harrison: I got a guy to come, Marcusa, I’ll tell you, he came about 10 days ago here for 3 days and that’s what he come for. He just want to catch a big one, just a 3 pound crappie.

Jimmy Dean: And you got some people to come, you was talking about earlier, Ramsey, about people coming from other states and all, you got some people, I know a guy right now that came, been here a while, just paid, does spent a lot of money, all he wanted to do is catch one big fish.

John Harrison: That’s it.

Jimmy Dean: And I’m not going to say who the guide was he was with, but he caught that one fish and he was one of the happiest fellow guys on that lake.

John Harrison: Yes sir.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

John Harrison: Yes sir.

Jimmy Dean: He wanted to catch that one fish and he weighed 3 02.

John Harrison: Yeah.

Jimmy Dean: The fish he caught.

John Harrison: Yep.

Ramsey Russell: Wow. Are there lakes you all know of that have a lot more fish, a lot more crappie, but not as big or are there crappie lakes that you all want to go to?

John Harrison: Well, I fish a lot of different lakes down south Eagle Lake and years ago it, I remember catching a lot of big ones out there, but now a 2 pound fish are a little over 2, but I think the limit’s 30, got to be over 11 inches, but the numbers are there, I mean, that’s that – I mean you about going to get 30 and it’s just a continuous 12 months out of a year, you can catch them there.

Ramsey Russell: So you do fish other lakes, not just here. How about you, Mr. Jimmy? You go elsewhere to fish for crappie?

Jimmy Dean: I really don’t, to be honest. I used to fish the waterway a lot with my dad when I was a kid, other than right here is where I started, where I was raised up on this lake, but mainly this pretty much the only place I fish.

John Harrison: The waterways coming back, I mean, they tell me some boys been fishing over, he said it’s coming back.

Jimmy Dean: The waterway’s getting, they catching some real good fish over there now.

John Harrison: I heard they was, really good ones.

Jimmy Dean: It’s coming back and you catch a lot of – slot limit on like on the waterway where we live, where John Blake lives is 9 inches and that’s what I said earlier, my daddy loved to catch a 9 and a half inch fish, he’ll feel his cool, whatever limit 30 and he’s happy, 15 weighed 3 pounds.

John Harrison: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: That’s right.

Jimmy Dean: Because he loves to eat them.

John Harrison: Yeah.

Jimmy Dean: But I mainly just fish Grenada Lake. It’s really on my backdoor –

John Harrison: It’s what you used to and you’ve been fishing like me the whole life and I get up in the summertime like and nobody, it was like me and him, I’d blow, when I come by last year and they, like I said he’d show up about 8:00 or 9:00 but of course Jimmy and I stayed till 3:00 or 4:00 o’ clock in the evening, but dinner, I’m about to be out of there, but nobody down there but me and him, maybe one more, all summer we, it’s just us 3 down there –

Jimmy Dean: And we catch fish too.

John Harrison: Yeah, we never check up fishing.

Jimmy Dean: But all my, the last 20 years, I will say this, I always wondered from one year to the next because all I ever did was old school fish and up until this last May, but every year I’d say we ain’t going to catch no big fish, they ain’t going to, they catching them out, I always got this excuse, I’m going to say, they so much prey, they catching them out. But year after year I go back to the same place been fishing for 50 years and still catch 2 pound big fish.

Ramsey Russell: Really.

Jimmy Dean: And I don’t – I guess it’s caused the vegetation, the way they grow, like the documentary I mentioned earlier about them, they got to grow fast. But you would think they’d be gone with the pressure, especially the pressure, but year after year you get, you keep coming – I’ve been fishing it all my life and I keep catching good fish, I mean 2 pound fish is good fish.

Ramsey Russell: You all been fishing this lake for 50 years, you all bound to have some spots, you’re going to make the loops and go check them every year.

Jimmy Dean: No, not us.

Ramsey Russell: And you ain’t going to tell Little Riddle about it, are you?

John Blake: I’ve been following John Harris around 15 years behind him, he don’t even know it.

Jimmy Dean: Yeah.

John Blake: And he’s went with me a couple times –

Ramsey Russell: I got too, put an air tag in his boat, he won’t know.

John Blake: I don’t have to, no more, hopefully.

Jimmy Dean: John pulled up on me, he pulls up on me sometimes, said, I got a GPS onto your boat.

Ramsey Russell: Well, one last question I got for you is what’s one mistake that you see people make during the spring spawn that keeps them from catching more or keeps them from catching bigger fish?

John Harrison: 2 things in my mind sticks out is fishing too fast.

Jimmy Dean: Yep.

John Harrison: And it’s hard for me to say –

Ramsey Russell: What do you mean fishing too fast now?

John Harrison: Just kind of fishing with your eyesight instead of taking your time like we talked about earlier, fishing side to side, they run over and fish this tree and they fishing with their eyes, they look over yonder, well, that looks better and they run over and fish that and they ain’t get no bite and they run over yonder and before you know it, they done trumped over the fish –

Jimmy Dean: And walking through them.

John Harrison: And walked through them and stirred the water up, done got it muddy, if you’ll look behind, you done stirred the mud up, you done scared them fish off. And so many times I tell people, when you holding that jig pole, it’s a nervous 2 or 3 twitch, it ain’t whooping a cat’s tail. And some of them will say, you’ll see I’m doing this and doing this and nothing looks natural about that, put that bait in the water and look at that what you’re doing and nothing looks natural about that. If you’ll just twitch it and hold it a little bit, just a little, just 2 or 3 little twitch reels and hold it still, you’ll come – your success rate will be a lot better than whipping a cats tails.

Ramsey Russell: Don’t go in there just bopping it.

John Harrison: Yeah, don’t just bop bop and then bop bop, just take –

Ramsey Russell: That ain’t fishing.

John Harrison: No.

John Blake: Even though they call it a jig, don’t go in there just going jig, jig.

Ramsey Russell: Right, let it swim around.

John Harrison: But having patience since –

Ramsey Russell: Because really, like you got those long tensile stringer on you all, I mean, in the water, how that –

John Harrison: Hold them still and they still going to do this, hold them still.

Ramsey Russell: It’s going to look like a fish just holding there.

Jimmy Dean: All right.

John Harrison: You looked at that Livescope, put that jig over that fish’s head and do that hard as you can.

Ramsey Russell: He’s gone, son

John Harrison: He gone, put that jig over his head, hold it still as you can, you can’t hold it still enough and watch that fish turn up and get it. I mean, that’s simple.

John Blake: Don’t move. That’s what the big saying was, don’t move.

John Harrison: Don’t move.

Jimmy Dean: You learn a lot looking at that Livescope.

John Harrison: Yeah, I had – I don’t know how we ever caught any all these years because I put it in there.

Jimmy Dean: I wandered that to you, John.

John Harrison: And I jig – and you put it in our scope and you start that with one sometimes you’ll get one, 9 out of 10, he gone.

Seaker_F: Yeah.

Jimmy Dean: I think my opinion, I think they bite a lot better, the stiller it is.

John Harrison: Yeah, the stiller you can hold it.

Jimmy Dean: No matter whether you wading or Livescoping or whatever you doing.

John Harrison: Yep.

Ramsey Russell: Really.

John Harrison: And that’s hard to do in the wind –

Ramsey Russell: Let the jig do the work.

Jimmy Dean: Let the jig do the work. Just, I mean, you going to be moving a little, whether you know it or not.

John Harrison: You can’t hold it still enough, that’s right.

Jimmy Dean: But doing all that, that’s a no, no for me, moving so much.

Ramsey Russell: And I guess one thing I’ve learned from this conversation is probably like, I see a long log, I’m going to move slow as I can and jig it all, but one thing, I think I probably been holding it too deep.

John Harrison: That’s a main thing.

Ramsey Russell: One thing, Little Riddle said yesterday, he said the minute you can’t see, like drop it down a minute, you can’t see that jig no more, it’s perfect depth.

John Harrison: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: And I never thought about that.

John Harrison: Yeah. I’ve caught him even Livescoping out there in 10 or 12 foot of water and you look, you say, what’s that on top? Back in February, I caught some, literally, I’m telling you, down at Carver’s and water was mucky mud and I was in 10 or 12 foot of water, well its no use in looking. If he was over a foot deep, you forget him, but some of them I had a weight about, oh, I’d say 4 inches from a jig and a lot of times my weight would be out and I’d hold that jig and when that fish would thump it, I set the hook and in one second his mouth would be out of the water, I don’t see how his fins, wouldn’t either way, they wouldn’t be 4 inches under that water.

John Blake: We caught 2 like that today, where we were trying to slime line for –

John Harrison: What I am trying to say and a lot of people –

John Blake: Wait outside the water –

John Harrison: You don’t notice it that Livescope and you look in 3 or 4, 5 or 6.

Jimmy Dean: That’s what I was telling Nathan, that’s Monday when I caught that limit Monday, most of those fish I was in 8 foot of water.

John Harrison: Yeah.

Jimmy Dean: But they was foot to 2 foot deep and I had pulled all my line up and –

John Harrison: It’s like this in the summertime, he’s going down where it’s cool. In a wintertime like now, February and March, the warmest water’s on top.

Jimmy Dean: But just no matter what depth of water he is, I think what John’s getting at, no matter what depth water you in, a lot of times them fishes, they’ll be up there footwater, I don’t care if you’re in 12 foot of water –

John Harrison: Or 20 foot.

Jimmy Dean: 20 foot.

John Harrison: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Interesting.

John Harrison: Just where that’s the warmest waters, right, a foot on the surface and that’s where he going to be and where it’s comfort to him to.

John Blake: Add on to that crazy little thing on the water way back home we had a place that was in 7 foot of water and there was a stump flats where they’d cut them off and they were like a foot and a half under the surface, the fish were done spawning, but out there in the middle of that river, on top of that stump, they were spawning –

John Harrison: On top of it, yeah.

John Blake: On top of the stump, in 7 foot of water, on top of a 5 foot stump, just like you were talking about the fish, like down the Perry Creek because it warms up later, that water column, I mean, that’s the thing that I learned the most was Livescope, they’ll spawn in the craziest places that you didn’t think –

John Harrison: And I’ve heard –

Ramsey Russell: If the water temperature, right.

John Blake: It’s got to be in that and it’s that same thing that he’s talking about them coming up sun and that water column, wherever that water is –

Ramsey Russell: The comfort.

John Blake: In that degree, they’ll like saying this, there was 1 spawning on top of a stump 5 foot of water and a thousand people for 10, 20 years drove past, never thought there’d be a spawning fish there. That’s the truth.

Ramsey Russell: People overlook obvious places or places that they wouldn’t think of and it sounds made a big takeaway is they tend to fish too fast.

John Harrison: Yeah. Patience, patience.

Ramsey Russell: And just take your time, what else you got to do but go back to the office, get back in the truck.

John Harrison: Or get mad and get disgusted because you fished 10 trees and your buddies done caught 4 or 5 over, he ain’t moved. I done fished all these trees.

Jimmy Dean: Yeah.

John Harrison: I ain’t got a bite.

Jimmy Dean: That’s what, I ain’t never had as much patience and that’s how I train, taught my daughter to crap fishing. She’s a heck of a good crap fish.

John Harrison: That’s what I taught my wife.

Jimmy Dean: She tuck it all, she does it all. But she’s got the patience and I don’t. And she come down here, she’ll be down here probably this starting this weekend, turkey hunting and crap fishing, but she’ll stand there because I told her, I said, if you got the patience, you stand there and she does it and she catches them and she will wear them out.

John Harrison: Yep. Because she got patience.

Jimmy Dean: Yeah, she’ll stand there, fishes real slow –

John Harrison: She didn’t get that from me, she got it from her mama.

Jimmy Dean: She got it from a mama.

John Harrison: Yeah, or granddaddy.

Ramsey Russell: Last question is, what’s your go to crappie recipe? Why is it fried? And what’s the secret to perfectly fried catfish? Anybody got to say, how do you all like to fry catfish? I’m saying, cat, how do you all like to fry crappie?

John Harrison: All right, I got 2 ways. No, most people, they put the cornmeal on them and fry. Me, I like them a little better, I put sour cream on them. I take a gallon bag, I put my fillets in there, I put me about 2 spoons of sour cream in there, get them all, it looks like a mess. Make sure that you get your grease pretty much like 3, you want it 350 when you drop, but you want it 325 before you take this next step. Flour, not cornmeal.

Ramsey Russell: Oh.

John Harrison: Take you a cup of flour and dump over in there, zip it up, shake that bag. Every one of them becomes perfectly loose then, drop them with that flour and that sour cream over in there and fry them just like you would any other. You try that. Now that probably –

Ramsey Russell: Where are you from? Are you from Mississippi?

Jimmy Dean: I fake say he’s from Kowloon County.

John Harrison: Don’t, hey, don’t, don’t knock it till you try me.

Jimmy Dean: Me and you think the same thing, man.

Ramsey Russell: Hey look, I take it I will try. I promise you I will try it, but that is not what I expected to hear.

Jimmy Dean: Me neither.

John Harrison: Here’s my favorite one, bar none and I’ve had hundreds of clients tell me this is the best one yet. Bake them, put them in a baking pan, push them all tight together.

Jimmy Dean: Yeah, they good that way.

John Harrison: Alright. Put a little Lawry Seasoning salt on them. Get you some sour cream and cheddar, make sure they’re lays, crush them up in the back, cover that whole layer of fish with sour cream and cheddar chips. Go back with Mexico Four Cheeses and cover the top of that, then take you a bottle of ranch dressing and drizzle it side to side about one inch apart, all the way from one end to the other. Put them in the oven on 350 for about 25 minutes. Absolutely, the best crappie you’ve ever put in your mouth.

Jimmy Dean: I always say, I ever messed up in it if you overcook them. I ain’t never really eat none bad unless they’ve been overcooked.

John Harrison: If they start to float, they ready?

Jimmy Dean: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: I’m a cornmeal fried guy.

Jimmy Dean: Me too.

John Harrison: You ain’t tried that flour yet?

Ramsey Russell: I’m going to try it –

Jimmy Dean: I do the old fashioned way. I just throw it them in the cornmeal, put a little salt and pepper seasoning in them and I put throw them in that grease like John said, 325 is what I cook mine on. When they hit 325, I drop them in there, I’m ready, it ain’t just a few minutes. You ready to eat?

John Blake: My only secret is frying them in duck fat.

Ramsey Russell: I can say that.

John Blake: It’s really good.

Ramsey Russell: I’ve gotten to where I use all the lard tallow, but I’m going to try the duck fat.

John Blake: This awesome, bro.

Ramsey Russell: I’m going to try it.

John Harrison: I never tried it.

John Blake: French fries tell you to knock your socks off –

Ramsey Russell: Popcorn – anything you cook with duck fat’s good.

Jimmy Dean: Yeah, I would believe. I ain’t never tried it, but it’s like you was talking about the bear –

Ramsey Russell: Oh, the bear grease.

Jimmy Dean: Bear grease last night, I never – I told you I tried to eat bear one time and I just, I ain’t got nothing but –

John Harrison: I tried it one time. I’d about soon eat a possum.

Jimmy Dean: Me too. But Ramsey was talking about the grease, how good the food was cooking.

Ramsey Russell: I’m telling him, the thing I like about black bear is it’s like venison and I love venison, but it’s got more marvel and it’s got more fat. And you can take the actual white fat and render it down to make a grease that makes great pastries. I’ve never fried crappie in it, don’t plan on it, but I’ve cooked with it and it’s good. The duck fat I’m a ball with, I mean my go to for fried fish is going to be, I like to season the meat, salt and pepper, maybe a little bit at –

Jimmy Dean: Slap Ya Mama.

Ramsey Russell: Slap Ya Mama, that Cajun seasoning, then I put it in the cornmeal. When it hits about 300, I put it in the cornmeal, drop it in hot grease, pull it out, salt it, I like to apply my salt, then eat it, boom. It’s just that I like dark, I don’t like white, I want to be –

John Harrison: Crunchy.

Ramsey Russell: Crunchy, because the first thing I’ll do back in the day, somebody eat those scaling the fish for you frying them whole, first piece I’m going for is the tail man. I’m going to sit there and nibble it like I’m a child eating potato chips.

Jimmy Dean: I tell you what you can do, you can take one of them big crappie we’ve been talking about throughout this podcast. You could take one of them big crappie and I do it about once a year, not much and score him and scale him and put him in that big black skin and I’m going to –

John Harrison: That’s exactly what I was thinking to you next.

Jimmy Dean: Alright let me tell you, you ain’t going to eat no finer –

Ramsey Russell: Bacon?

John Harrison: No, fried. Every fish I –

Ramsey Russell: Fried whole, yes sir.

Jimmy Dean: Fried whole, going to scale it and top that stove right there.

John Harrison: Every fish I ate growing up, my grandmother, Grenada Farms was a milk company, run milk. And she saved all the milk cartons, every one of them and she’d put, we’d put 1, sometimes 2 crappie in that milk carton. She’d write crappie on it, fold it over and put freezer tape on it, put water in it, stack it in a deep freeze. I’d scale them, I’d cut the head off, leave the tail and fins on them, scorn him about twice, she’d take that black skillet about half full of grease and she put him salt and pepper him real good. Put that cornmeal on him and pack him where you scorned him and put him in that skillet and she turned him solid brown on one side.

Jimmy Dean: That’s the way I do.

John Harrison: Take a spatula, scoop under him, turn him over.

Jimmy Dean: My grandmother taught me that.

John Harrison: Brown him on the other side. That is absolutely the best fish you’ll put in your mouth. Nothing, I ain’t no filet will touch it.

Jimmy Dean: That’s right. My grandmother taught me that, back when I was a kid, I take a BB gun or whatever, started out hunting for you, I started out deer hunting by bird hunting, my dad was a big bird hunter, bird hunted all his life. But anyway, long story short, I go out there and kill a blackbird or whatever, I kill my BB gun, my grandmama going to cook it, that’s the truth. Back then we had a lot of Fill Larks.

John Harrison: Yeah. Meadowlarks.

Jimmy Dean: About whatever you want to call them. But they’d be cooked if I killed it.

John Harrison: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Is there any fish you all prefer over crappie?

John Harrison: Walleye.

Jimmy Dean: Sager.

Ramsey Russell: Are you from Mississippi.

Jimmy Dean: Yeah, he better not be.

John Harrison: I ate some walleye one time. I’m telling you –

Ramsey Russell: Walleye is fine. I’ve eaten yellow person, it’s delicious.

John Harrison: Yeah, boy brought some walleye one time I said –

Ramsey Russell: I like my dead gum fried crappie, man.

John Harrison: And corn and flour and sour cream.

Jimmy Dean: I don’t like nothing, no butter fried crappie, as far as fried fish, but I love catfish, I love walleye, I like it all. But if I was going to be truthful, by bar none, crappie is the best.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, we ate fried fish last night and –

Jimmy Dean: Yeah, we did.

Ramsey Russell: Kent’s wife filleted the fish, I ain’t never seen this. She filleted fried fillets, fried what was left over.

John Harrison: Right, yeah.

Jimmy Dean: That’s good.

Ramsey Russell: And I go in there, oh, look at this. So I get me a whole bunch of fillets and get me one of them parks and I sit down and Kent’s like, hey, we got fillets in there, you ain’t got to eat that, I go, no, I got fillets and I’m sitting there nibbling on it and he kept on making pastry. Finally, Mr. Jimmy said, I reckon the boy knows what he wants.

John Harrison: Yeah, that’s right.

Jimmy Dean: I knew I could watch watching you eat them, I knew it. It ain’t very many people like their fish out of the way.

Ramsey Russell: Oh man, that meat in between the bones is fine.

Jimmy Dean: A lot of people don’t even know how to eat them that away.

Ramsey Russell: Right.

Jimmy Dean: But that’s the best eating –

John Harrison: Its all the bones.

Jimmy Dean: Like you had them last night. Taking, pull it, just take your teeth and pull them off that bone and big bone, rib bones and eat that tail, man.

Ramsey Russell: Well, gentlemen, thank you all. Thank you all for a great conversation. Thank you all for hosting me up here, to my buddy Little Riddle John Blake. Man, thank you for having me up and welcome me into this amazing 120 year crappie fishing tribe here on Grenada Lake. Thank you 2 guys for joining.

John Harrison: Thank you all very much.

John Blake: Thank you.

Ramsey Russell: And folks, thank you all for listen this episode of MOJO’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast. See you next time.

[End of Audio]

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