The Crappie
From the Pendergrass Library
Last year Santa managed to get an ice auger down my chimney for my son, and this year he followed it up with a Vexilar - a fish locator, for those who might not know. It’s an electronic gizmo with bells and whistles designed to alert the operator that a fish is approaching his hook. I’m told all good ice fishermen have one, and now we do too.
The gifts don’t actually belong to me, of course, but I still get to use them by association. By association I mean that at the true owner’s whim I get to haul them from lake to lake in the dead of winter in hopes of enticing a fish up through the ice. And by dead of winter I mean when the thermometer is stuck way below zero and the arctic winds howl across the land.
So this past Sunday the temperature managed to climb way up to five below zero. The winds cooperated by picking up in intensity, managing to slice through the three layers of jackets I wore and freezing my boots to my feet. I was out on the lake hoping to survive an hour or two of fishing.
The lake we’d chosen as our possible place of death is not fished very often, not really. Nobody seems to come here due to the belief that there’s not many fish. I picked this spot out of consideration for the search parties that would be looking for our bodies later; I didn’t want them to miss the Packers football game and this lake is not too far off the beaten path.
Pulling our gear from our two-wheel-drive Jeep the lake resembled a scene from a National Geographic movie about polar bears, or stranded ice-breakers. The whiteness of the lake mirrored the whiteness of the land. With about a dozen holes drilled I was told that the fish locator was showing lots of ‘somethings’ near the bottom, making one of us happy about being here.
I’ll cut to the chase, I didn’t catch anything. I didn’t have a bite. I didn’t have a tug or any kind. In fact, I believe I’ve yet to catch a fish in nearly three winters. However, the owner of the auger and the Vexilar did catch some fish, three crappies, which doesn’t sound like much until you consider their size.
I know that bigger crappies are often caught by other anglers. For fishermen who know what they’re doing monster-sized crappies aren’t out of the question. But for me-and-mine big crappies don’t often make themselves known, that’s why the two 13-inch beauties we took are special to us.
Couple those big fish with the coldness of the day, the fact we were on a lake that isn’t supposed to harbor such brutes, and it’s a miracle; a holiday miracle, so to speak.
And here’s the proof - we’d been fishing for about 15 minutes or so when Jack’s little fishing rod bent over double. Most times that’s not a big deal for small ice-fishing rigs, but when he began pumping the fish up toward the hole it sort of stood out. Sure enough, it’s a big crappie. It’s huge. The boy manages to get the fish to the hole and is just about to reach for the leviathan, when the hook comes out of its mouth. We’re standing there with the largest crappie either of us has ever caught, and it isn’t attached to a line and it’s still in the hole.
And the fish doesn’t move. It’s like the crappie can’t believe it’s been hooked. It’s stunned. How dare a mere human drag it from the depths of the lake and up towards the surface? I’m waiting for it to grant us three wishes. It lays there at the top of the hole for what seems like minutes. Time stands still. We look at one another. A wolf howled in the distance. A crow flew over us. You can hear our hearts beating. Then Jack grabs the fish and throws it on the ice.
The crappie is as big as a frying pan; its 13-inches long and eight inches wide. It isn’t possible. It’s not to be believed. We’d smile but our faces are frozen. For a moment I felt a little warmth in my chest. We danced around on the ice wanting to hug one another, but that would be weird so we didn’t.
A short while later a bookend crappie is caught, without all the drama. But this fish is just as huge.
Another little nine-inch crappie is caught later, and we’re done. The cold drove us off the lake and back home. We caught some fish, the Jeep started and ran, and none of our gear broke in the process.
Truly, it’s a miracle
Darrell Pendergrass lives in Grand View.