Pro Staff Team News June 07 Volume 4.6 problem was I hadn t brought my usual crappie gear along. When I m serious about crappie fishing I carry a separate tackle box for that purpose. It s loaded with the smaller jigs and tiny worms that crappie can t resist. I sat there picking at that miserable tangle of monofilament line for five minutes. In the meantime my little spinner-fly sank to the bottom in water that was at least 25-feet deep. I finally got the twisted line untangled and started reeling in. I moved my spinner-fly about three feet out of that deep water when the line tightened. Snag, I thought. Wrong! That snag turned out to be a dandy crappie. Public Panfish #1 (Continued) No other time of year consistently produces as good success for crappie fishing as does springtime. This is a period when these interesting panfish school up. Chances are if you find one there will be others in the same area. In the last newsletter issue I talked about the importance of fishing in the right spots if you hoped to catch crappie consistently. Once you ve got their springtime holding spots pinned down, the next step is to fish at exactly the right depth. I had the importance of fishing at the right depth brought home in a hurry one morning long ago on Columbia River backwaters called Coal Creek Sloughs west of Longview, Washington. These sloughs are home to both bass and a variety of panfish. I had been bass fishing one beautiful early July morning. The bass weren t cooperating. I had always done well for crappie in the part of the slough I was on. I decided I d fished bass long enough and would look for crappie instead. The Fishing at exactly the right depth is one of the keys to catching crappie like the one Anita Fagerstrom displays. As I said, I didn t have any of these things along. I scrounged around in my tackle box and finally found a couple of little spinner-flies. I cut a piece of bass-sized pork rind down to a couple of inches and hung it behind the fly. I took a little ¼-ounce Bead Chain sinker and hung it ahead of the spinner. The combination just barely gave me a lure heavy enough to throw with the casting outfit I d been using for bass. I fished that little spinner and rind in the spots where I usually caught fish when I had my crappie tackle along. I couldn t buy a bite. Finally, tired and disgusted, I tried to throw that lightweight rig farther than I should have. The result was a backlash that would have made a preacher practice profanity. I sat right there that morning and wound up catching 20 of the nicest crappie I ever took from Coal Creek Slough. Why hadn t I caught fish earlier? Because I hadn t been fishing deep enough. The fish weren t up in the shallows where I d expected to find them. They were much farther out. That backlash turned out to be a blessing. Once I finally blundered onto fishing the right depth, I started catching fish. Be assured this net full of crappies will be invited to dinner. Properly prepared, crappies are among the best eating of freshwater fish. (Continued on Page 2)
Our Mission Pursuing excellence in business through... marketing innovative fishing products and supporting our customers with superior service. Corporate Purpose To honor and glorify God by being good stewards of all He has entrusted to us and to have a positive influence on everyone who comes in contact with Mack s Lure. Making money must always be a by-product of building the character of men and women and the rendering of essential service to mankind. 2 Contact Information Phone 509.667.9202 Order Desk 800.525.8737 FAX 509.667.9896 Postal address: 2514 Easy Street Wenatchee, WA 98801 Email Addresses General Information: mackslure@mackslure.com Sales/Customer Service: mackslure@mackslure.com Marketing: bernie@mackslure.com Bernie Barringer <*((((( >{ Director of Marketing & Promotions Mack s Lure PO Box 650 Pine River, MN 56474 Web Site: al@mackslure.com re. Submitting information and articles for newsletter Pro Staff Team members are encouraged to submit articles and product evaluations for publishing in the newsletter. We at Mack s Lure would like to hear about your techniques of fishing with our products, along with your stories and pictures to go with them. Please send your articles and product reviews to: Mack s Lure 2514 Easy Street Wenatchee, WA 98801 Attn: Editor Or email to: bob@mackslure.com (Continued from Page 1) I ve had this same kind of experience time and again in crappie fishing. This time of year you ll find crappie in tight clusters and at the same depth. I don t know how many times I ve taken beautiful catches from around downed logs on Western crappie waters. Drop a jig or perhaps a little marabou-feathered fly on one side of such logs and nothing happens. Let it down to exactly the right depth on the other side and it s a fish every cast. You simply can t be too alert when you are after crappie. Try to remember what you were doing and the depth at which you were fishing when one comes along. Get your lure back into the exact spot where the first one appeared. I repeat, in the spring crappie will be in tight clusters and feeding at exactly the same depth. They might come up to grab a lure, but they will have followed it up from the depth where they first saw it and where others are holding. A word of caution: If you find crappie holed up in the branches of a downed tree, and that s a common situation, try to avoid tugging and pulling on the branches if you hang up. Sure as you do you ll spook the fish. When that happens you may as well move to a new spot. Even after you ve found crappie and established the depth at which they are holding, there s a third and final key to putting them into your boat consistently. It s using the proper lure speed. You ve managed to find spots where the crappies are concentrated. You ve also been careful to determine the exact depth at which the school is holding. Those two steps are essential to successful crappie catching. However, you re still not going to catch very many unless you know the speed at which your bait or lures must be manipulated to get maximum results. What is the right speed? It s not at all involved. What you need to remember always is that you simply can t fish too slowly if it s crappie you re after. That sounds simple enough, but some would-be crappie fishermen never do figure it out. I ve fished crappie a few times with one of these guys. He s one of those nervous individuals who is just not happy unless he s jerking and twitching his rod tip and retrieving his lure so fast a starving barracuda would have trouble catching up with it. That flat won t work where crappies are concerned. Sometimes the best speed of retrieve for a crappie bait or lure is simply not moving it at all. One of the most effective methods to catch crappie under many conditions is to suspend a little jig, fly or miniature plastic worm beneath a float. Cast your float out where you know the crappie are holding and let it set. Now retrieve it a couple of feet. Let it rest again. Do this all the way back to your boat. Now and then, depending on how rippled the surface is, many of your hits come while the lure is seemingly dead in the water. Just the up and down movement the float imparts to the lure as it bobs on the surface is enough to attract crappie. Tiny tube lures, flies dressed with marabou feathers and miniature plastic worms are all super crappie baits. Use all of these lures with a leadhead jig of appropriate size and remember that the best size weight isn t necessarily always going to be the same. (Continued on Page 3)
All of the lures pictured here are darn good crappie catchers. Even so, you ve still got to fish them at the right depth and at the proper speed to have consistent success. I prefer to use the lightest leadhead I can get by with and still fish efficiently. I say efficiently, because while I might generally favor a 1/32nd-ounce leadhead, I don t want to use something that falls as slowly as a 1/32nd-ounce jig does if the fish are feeding at 25-feet. For the month of June get your 30% pro staff discount and then another 20% off on all 0.8 Smile Blades I recall fishing some bushes on a favorite lake that always hold crappie in the spring. The guy I was with couldn t figure out why I was catching one fish after another while he wasn t getting a bump. I had given him lures identical to my own. Finally, knowing something was haywire and wanting to see him get his share of the action, I asked to see his jig. One glance was enough to discover his problem. We were fishing water only 3 to 4-feet deep. While the miniature grub he had been using was the same as my own, the little jig he was using it on was 1/16th of an ounce. Mine was only 1/32nd-ounce. His lure was falling so fast the crappies didn t have time to get to it before it hit bottom. As soon as I gave him a leadhead the weight of my own he started catching fish. To an inexperienced crappie fisherman that slight difference in jig size might not seem significant. It was and is. Little things can make a really big difference in any kind of fishing. The sooner you make that discovery, the sooner your catches will increase. If you have read my book, Catch (Continued on Page 4) 3
More Crappie, you will recall a chapter in which I mentioned a man named Tom Jones, of Longview, Washington. Tom has been gone a long time now, but I always regarded him as the best all around crappie fishermen I ever met. He went after crappie the way us bass nuts go after largemouth. I used to see him often at a favorite lake I fished 50 years ago. He had the crappie holding spots pinned down. Every now and then I d take a break from bass fishing and run by to check how Tom was doing catching crappie. I did that one day and thought my eyes were deceiving me. Tom had a pair of burlap bags attached to the side of his boat. He showed me a couple of fish out of the bag on the starboard side. They were average sized fish. Then he reached into the bag attached to the port side. In it he had a bunch of crappie larger than anything I d seen in Tom s part of the world. They were beauties. You can t move your lure too slowly while fishing for crappie. If you re using lures or bait on small jigs like those shown here, be sure to use a size that matches the depth of the water you re using them in. I asked Tom, he was as nice a guy as he was a good angler, how he caught those fish. He showed me. He had a small bucktail fly that looked something like a cross between a Royal Coachman and a Cowlitz Special. The fly was suspended under a float. Tom cast this rig out and then inched it back. Many of his fish were caught when the fly seemed dead in the water. I ve always remembered the tips Tom shared with me. One of them was how slow you must fish to catch crappie consistently. It s something you also need to remember if you hope to fashion 4 a successful approach to catching them yourself. In the last four columns I ve shared the three main keys to successful crappie angling. Once again they are location, depth and proper lure speed. These keys aren t something I read about somewhere. They are based on a lifetime of fishing experience. If you want to have more success and fun catching these interesting and great eating panfish, there s no better time than right now to put these keys to work in your own angling endeavors. Trivia Question: Do you know what type of scales a Walleye has? There are four types of fish scales. Placoid scales, also called dermal denticles, are similar to teeth in that they are made of dentin covered by enamel. They are typical of sharks and rays. Ganoid scales are flat, basal-looking scales that cover a fish body with little overlapping. They are typical of gar and bichirs. Cycloid scales are small oval-shaped scales with growth rings. Bowfin and remora have cycloid scales. Ctenoid scales are similar to the Cycloid scales, with growth rings. They are distinguished by the spines that cover one edge. Halibut & Flounder have this type of scale. Many fish with which we are most familiar have cycloid scales, which are the thin, round, almost transparent scales that we find when we are cleaning trout, salmon, or herring. Minnows also have cycloid scales. These scales are mostly buried in the epidermis, allowing only the small posterior margin to show. And The Answer Is Most modern teleost fishes have two types of scales: cycloid and ctenoid. You see cycloid scales on salmon, trout, minnows, sardines. Ctenoid scales are found on all of our sunfishes, perch (walleye), and many of the more evolutionally modern fish. Ganoid scales are found on an ancient group of teleosts; the gars and bowfins. Placoid scales are found on skates, rays, and sharks. Scales are used to age some of our fish, but there are inherent problems with using scales; most importantly, they are noisy and difficult to read as fish get older. On our walleye and a few other species, we use otoliths for aging. Otoliths are another calcified structure (akin to your inner ear bones) and work much better for aging older fish, as well as for fish that live in a constant temperature environment. Scales are kind of like counting rings on a tree. Unlike trees, fish do not have one growth ring per year, but closer to a growth ring per day or week (depending on species of fish, temperature, how much it eats, etc.). During cooler temperatures, those rings are closer together, and in the summer they are further apart. During the winter when fish are less active, they reabsorb some of the calcium from the scales, which creates a break (check) in the rings, creating an annual ring. The problem is that checks in the rings can be created other ways as well: spawning (especially females using calcium for egg development), cold snaps, external stress (angling?), lack of prey tems. All of these can create false checks in the scales, creating a noisy scale. Also, as fish get older, their growth in length gets less and less each year. So as a fish gets older, the rings on their scales get closer together as well, again with the associated checks, etc, you get a lot of noise again. You can think of scales akin to looking at (and listening to) a record album a record, not a cd). You look at a record, you know how many songs are on it by the spacing of the grooves. The more you listen to it, handle it, and drop it, the more scratches get on the surface. You can still tell how many songs are on it, but when you listen to it, it gets a lot more noisy. The answer was relayed to me from a friend who is a fishery biologist for Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. Larry McClintock
Mike is the brother of our next door neighbors, Jim and Sandy Hoffman. My husband and I are having a family argument with my husband s sister and husband--so you need to solve this argument, please. What is the difference between a walleye and a pike? Thanks for your answer and if you want to forward this to Mike, please feel free to do so. Ron and Nancy Russell Spokane, WA Hello, Although sometimes called yellow Pike or Pickerel; Walleye are not from the same family of fish. The Walleye is a Perciform fish (in other words part of the perch family) the Pike is an Esocidae (which includes Pike, Pickerel, and Musky). Walleye are shaped differently especially in the head and the Pike can grow much larger. I hope that helped. Bob Schmidt Carl Waltkins & Steve of Reno, NV limited on Trout, at Amador Lake, using Wedding Rings & worms 04/26/2007 Steelie Dan Fishing Guide Service. Captain Rene Villanueva 5
Bernie Barringer and amateur partner for this day was Dale Bibbler from Michigan fishing the FLW Red Wing Walleye Tournament. Pro Staffers! We need photos of your catches. It is important to have as many pictures as possible for the public to see just how well Mack s Lure products work and the bounty that they help to catch. We also need to get illustrations and explanations of how you use some of your favorite rigs. We need these for the newsletter and for the Mack s Lure web site. All illustrations with explanations and your photos can be sent to Mack s Lure, 2514 Easy Street, Wenatchee, WA 98801 or you can email them to al@mackslue.com 6
The John Day Special ready to fish The John Day Special components, Charlie Slider, 3mm black plastic beads, #6-6 bead chain swivel The Smile Blades here are some of the most used ones in this setup, but all will be effective. You can also use the 0.8 Smile Blades for more of a finesse rig and the 1.5 for a bolder presentation. The John Day Special The John Day Special came about from the joint efforts of Mah-Hah Outfitters Guide, Pro Staffer Steve Fleming and Pro Staffer Larry McClintock. This lure, seen here tied with black line for visibility, has 5 components. The lead head is a Charlie Brewer Slider, the line is 14 pound test, or whatever you desire, 3 MM black plastic beads, a 1.1 Smile Blade and a #6 black 6 bead chain swivel from Mack s Lure. The knots used for both the Slider and the bead chain are palomar knots and the typical length of the leader is 18 inches. This is a great rig to use for casting and retrieving for walleye and bass and can be rigged weedless for casting into heavy cover. This lure has been responsible for many smallmouth bass over 19 inches and as big as 23 inches plus. Tight Lines! Here is a beatiful natural rainbow my wife caught using one of your lures I purchased last year. Her name is Yvonne Lapierre from Timmins Ontario, Canada. We had a very succesful day on Manitoulin Island which is the biggest fresh water island in the world. It was caught on a Sledge Hammer spinner. We caught 17 rainbow on an assortment of your spinners. My wife out fished me. She caught 13 of the 17. By the way, this was her first time fishing rainbow trout. I have used many of your products and I have been very successful using them. Keep on making good products. Gord Lapierre. 7
Promotional Pointers By Bernie Barringer Bernie Here s a picture of my personal best 8.9 pounds. I got this off of a crawler harness that I made from Mack s Lure stack beads with a wedding ring in between the beads. This particular harness has given up two 7 plus pound fish and the 8.9 in the picture. Tony Glynn We need fish tales from the Pro Staff and we need photos with the tales! One of the most rewarding aspects of managing a pro-staff made up of great people is that good ideas can come from any where. The Marketing Director doesn t have a corner on the market when it comes to good promotional ideas. That s the case with an idea that came from Jared Ayres and Tony Glynn, a couple tournament anglers and active Mack s Lure pro-staff members from Michigan. They did several in-store promotions this spring, and they came up with a neat idea that I really thought was terrific. They took their laptop with them and connected to the internet. That way they could go right to the Mack s Lure website and show pictures of products, read the descriptions of the products and answer questions about them right from the source. What a tremendous help. In one case, they actually had people order product off the website right then and there. Now here is an important thing to remember. If you are in a retailer that carries our products, you would never allow a person to order product off the website while you are in the store. There s a pretty good chance you wouldn t be invited back, and there would be some hard feelings. We are there to support the retailers, not to undermine them. However, many of you could do this at boat dealers where are products are not sold, or at sports shows where there are no Mack s Lure retailers. If you are at a sports show and have the Mack s Lure website up, the first option would be to direct the person to the nearest Mack s Lure retailer, especially if there was one in the building. That s a great way to win friends and influence people! If you go in a retailer such as a bait shop or a sporting goods store and are trying to influence them to carry Mack s Lure products, you may be able to show them the website so they can see the product pictures and descriptions. It is amazing how many places now have wireless internet. Using the Mack s Lure website to help sell product is another way that pro-staffers can keep up the good work! 8