As days grow shorter and water temperatures drop a whole new ballgame starts for anglers with a great feature of hot skillets and lip-lickin’ chow. It’s crappie time as autumn nears--not quite as good as the spring run, but still plenty exciting.

Crappies haven’t been completely dormant even through the hot months--they still feed a little--enough to get skinny. Some say they get thin enough to read through them. But cooling water puts them on the feed again and causes Ol' Papermouth to maraud for food. And though small, live minnows are the most accepted fare for both species, I have always pinned my bait hopes on live grasshopper--or crickets. Of course live minnows are good--even small panfish or game fish are legal, if taken legally. 
 
Incidentally, if you hear someone talking about fishing for calico bass or specks, he is referring to the black crappie, and if he throws out the word papermouth he is referring to whites. There are several differences in the crappie tandem, but the surest method of separating them is counting the number of spines in the dorsal fin. (on the back). The black will have 7 or 8 spines, the white 6. A lot of anglers rest their identification on the color of the sides, but all crappies tend to be lighter in muddy or murky water. That is largely the reason blacks are more at home in the northern part of the state and whites in the south. 
 
There is one undisputed theory on the two; in the spring, and again in the fall, they offer wonderfully thick filets that smell up the old iron skillet real good. They are just as tasty as they smell. Looking back on my associations with crappies, I don’t know how we fried them whole as compared to those thick, boneless, beautifully white filets. I can recall (with ecstasy) bringing in strings of crappies that for frying would only fit two to the iron skillet so each would have the benefit of the hot hog lard.
 
I learned about grasshoppers (the big yellow hoppers), and those black crickets that live under dried-up cow pies as a boy at Alf’s Bayou on the Scott County side of the Muscatatuck River east of Crothersville. I would load up my bicycle with my rifle, fishing pole, some bacon, a can of pork ‘n beans, a couple spuds, and head for the Bayou now and then for two or three days of solo camping and outdoorsing while living on young rabbits, squirrels, and fish as staples. That’s how I came by my pen name, by the way.
 
Be that as it was (awfully good sleeping beneath the stars), late one afternoon I caught some big, yellow hoppers for bait and was tossin’ them, and night crawler pieces, with fly rod to a bed of lily pads near the far bank. I had one of those skinny bobber set two feet above the hook, thinking I might connect with bullhead catfish for supper. But on the first cast my bobber came off the line and was floating close to the lily pads. 
 
I wanted to retrieve the bobber. So I was casting my baits over the bobber and trying to bring it in. I was making progress when everything stopped and I thought I had hooked a limb. But it fought back and I soon realized I was hooked for sure . . . to a fish. It turned out to be an 8 or 9-inch crappie so I did a couple of instant replays, maybe the original dittos. It was a good supper.
 
I use a long shank sunfish hook for hoppers, starting the point of the hook in the bottom of the insect and bring the point out at the rear end of the abdomen. I use only a very light split shot or lead wrap-on sinker or no sinker at all. The big yellow hopper casts well, especially on flyrod. The line is weight forward or a taper.
 
A two-pound coffee can makes a good storage place for bait--better than a mayonnaise jar--because it won’t break if dropped on a rock (and that happens)—a smorgasbord for fish. A strong cord can be tied to the container to suspend it from the shoulder to always be there when you want it. I punch air holes in the plastic lid and fill the can halfway with dry, green weeds to keep the hoppers happy. They should, of course, be kept cool, but not frozen--like in the frig (but I will vehemently deny, if necessary, that I wrote that).
  
Hooked, as I hook them, hopper or crickets can be fished like wet or dry flies, or deeper as live bait with, or without, a bobber. It depends on many conditions, but mostly where the fish are schooled.

REMEMBER--Teal and Canada goose hunters must remember that early seasons end, respectively, on Sept. 16 and 15. First segment of the dove season continues to Oct. 13.