Initially, the thought of hooking a crawfish onto my tru-turn hook (as a kid) made my stomach squeamish. That all changed one hot summer day in August!
For several days straight my cousin Bruce and I had been fishing our usual spots on Vernon Lake. The weather had been so hot that that the first few inches of the lake water was like a warm bath. It must have turned off the fishing because we could not catch dead sunfish. We were trying desperately to hook into some smallmouth bass. I can not remember who suggested it, but we picked up a dozen crayfish from a local bait shop.
When we returned to the lake, we loaded up the ‘Springbok’ with our gear and headed over to a small island about 150 yards from our cottage. We had low expectations about what we were about to do and the smell of homemade burgers on the BBQ from the deck of the cottage kept us ‘enticingly’ close. Our fish finder was not marking any fish (it rarely did this week) but it showed some great cover on a drop off in about 15 feet. My cousin threw our rusted anchor over the side and we popped the lid on our bait bucket. My cousin said,
“You first.”
I reached in to grab one of those tanks with claws and came out with 5 clamped to my hand.
Plan B kicked into effect immediately and my needle nose pliers plunged into the crawling mess and I retrieved a crawfish. Not knowing where or how to hook it, I put my hook into a fleshy part of the tail and struggled slightly to get it through it’s brown shell. Once that was done I threw on a small rubber core sinker and sent the clawed beast to the lake bottom. After two cranks off the bottom I watched my cousin struggle with the bait pail and it’s inhabitants.
Suddenly, my rod tip began to curl towards the surface of the water and my drag whined to life. I had a large fish on. After 15 aerial flips and stunts we landed a 2lb smallmouth. My cousin put the net down when my fish was in the boat and picked up his rod from the bottom of the boat. He began to holler as I just managed to pull the hook out of my fish’s mouth. He had a fish on!
It was pure joy for the next 50 minutes as we caught 6 nice smallmouths. There was even a double header in the mix. With the bait pail now empty we returned back to the cottage deck for a burger.
The guy in the bait shop sold two more dozen crawfish the next day to a couple of kids asking for more of his bass candy. I may have called it kryptonite back then if I knew how to spell it.
Try some bass candy today.
Bill Anderson
Muskoka Outdoors
