10-08-2013, 12:50 PM
A friend who moved to Weiser went camping out at Brownlee and invited me along. The campground was closed, so we walked in from the side and did a little night fishing by the railroad bridge. For the first hour we had very little luck. He had one crappie that came loose before he could get it to shore, and I had a good bite on one of my poles. Tried a variety, worms, mealworms, powerbait, corn, under bobbers, and off the bottom with slip sinkers but it just wasn't working for us. I didn't make it there until 9:30 so I think we would have done better with that type of fishing if I had gotten there before the sun went down.
We finally decided to bring down my battery and underwater light and started to have some luck out on the little concrete ledge at the end of the stone pillar. His son caught a crappie that we cut up for catfish bait (which still never caught is any catfish). I had a small white crappie jig that I tied on for his son and he started pulling them in one after another by jigging it at the edge of the light's reach. It took us a bit longer because we were still holding out hope for a catfish but I finally changed my second pole to a little tube jig and pulled in some crappie too. We put some into a live mesh basket in case we wanted to keep any, and let a lot go, or had them fall off by themselves. I think we dumped 15-20 out of the basket at the end of the night, maybe caught another 20-30 that we just released. All were small, 4-6 inches, maybe a touch bigger on some. 80% of those were caught by his son who was having a blast, so that is a great way to get kids excited about fishing.
Eventually the wind changed direction and started blowing in from across the water. It started to get cold and we decided to pack it up. It was tempting to keep some of the bigger ones, but he's close enough I'll just have to go visit more often and we will try for some worth eating.
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We finally decided to bring down my battery and underwater light and started to have some luck out on the little concrete ledge at the end of the stone pillar. His son caught a crappie that we cut up for catfish bait (which still never caught is any catfish). I had a small white crappie jig that I tied on for his son and he started pulling them in one after another by jigging it at the edge of the light's reach. It took us a bit longer because we were still holding out hope for a catfish but I finally changed my second pole to a little tube jig and pulled in some crappie too. We put some into a live mesh basket in case we wanted to keep any, and let a lot go, or had them fall off by themselves. I think we dumped 15-20 out of the basket at the end of the night, maybe caught another 20-30 that we just released. All were small, 4-6 inches, maybe a touch bigger on some. 80% of those were caught by his son who was having a blast, so that is a great way to get kids excited about fishing.
Eventually the wind changed direction and started blowing in from across the water. It started to get cold and we decided to pack it up. It was tempting to keep some of the bigger ones, but he's close enough I'll just have to go visit more often and we will try for some worth eating.
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