Consequently, his fishing and cabin fevers raged. By late February, he had become so antsy he was willing to employ radical methods to find Clinton's crappie, and he knows a lot of them, too.
Blevins has been an avid crappie angler since 1983. In recent years, he has held his own in regional crappie tournaments.
Back in the 1980s, Blevins discovered winter is the most fruitful season for catching oodles of big crappie from the big reservoirs in northeast Kansas. But the past four winters have been frustrating for crappie anglers because there haven't been as many big congregations scattered around the lakes, and the congregations that do exist quickly become pounded by anglers.
Northeast Kansas used to be a world-class crappie fishery, but Blevins suspects the many floods that have hit these parts since 1993 and the exponential increase in the angling pressure -- especially during the winter -- have adversely affected the crappie populations.
Since there aren't enough big schools of crappie to go around, the only way an angler can enjoy bountiful winter fishing is to be the first to locate a big school and to keep its whereabouts a secret for a few days.
That was Blevins' plan on his Feb. 19 visit to Clinton.
On this outing, about 40 percent of the lake was covered with ice. Blevins searched the lake's ice-free sections for hours, but caught only 11 crappie.
Such a paltry catch isn't unusual when the lake is partially covered with ice. Anglers postulate that crappie reside in the lake's ice-covered sections, preferring the shade the ice provides. In fact, crappie have been known to move overnight from a lake's open-water portions to the ice-covered areas, and some anglers contend crappie can hear the ice forming.
So after his sorry outing on Feb. l9, Blevins decided to employ his big Lowe boat the next day as an ice cutter and hopefully reveal a crappie hideaway under the ice.
On his second outing, the temperature rose from 33 degrees at 9 a.m. to 44 degrees at 3 p.m. A bit of mist and haze cluttered the sky at daybreak. Then it turned sunny for a spell, but by mid-afternoon thick sheets of clouds covered the sky. A wind from the northeast at eight to 11 mph, made it seem chillier than the thermometer indicated.
Blevins launched his boat at 9 a.m. and commenced cutting miles of ice, which ranged in thickness from a half-inch to three inches. By 11 a.m., he hadn't found a single crappie. Moreover, his boat was stymied by a massive patch of four-inch ice, and he was disheartened.
So he trailered his boat and drove to Pomona Lake, which had been sans ice for 14 days, but also pummeled by scores of fishermen.
Despite that, Blevins managed to find one big school of crappie from which he caught and released 50 in about two hours, proving once again that it is almost always best to fish ice-free waterways.
No comments
Commenting is turned off for this story.