Every spring I make a mental note to get out on the local lakes and fish for some slab crappies. The past few weeks have been ideal weather wise to be on a lake and start the season out looking for some slabs in the shallow bays of Pymantuning Lake. Before we get too far in this tale it would be helpful to explain what “a slab” means in crappie fishing.

Crappies primarily are identified as black or white crappies and are a species of pan fish. The term slab is used when you can bring to net a thick, heavy fish that is 12 to 14” long.

There are bigger crappies and they are super slabs. Crappies are excellent table fare and the larger panfish make great fillets for pan frying or deep frying with a batter.

Our goal on this trip as I met up with my fishing partners Sim Grossman and Ken Bryan was to get into a hot spot and catch us some slabs! In the early spring months’ crappies like to congregate in shallower waters of the bays and edges of the waterways. In fact, we would concentrate on water that ranged from 2 feet to 5 feet and fish an area that had a lot of stumps and timber structure.

The good news is that these areas hold the fish but they also have many snags to catch you! It took us a greater part of the morning testing out likely areas and finding more snags than fish.

Fishermen are a superstitious lot and sometimes they change up their routine for a different look or new strategy. Sim decided that we needed to move to an area that wasn’t so congested with boats so we moved to the opposite side of the bay and were more sheltered from the wind. Ken Bryan was trying out a fathead minnow set a few feet deep on a jig head and slip bobber and he cast toward the shoreline. As I watched his cast and landing bobber I saw it disappear.

Immediately I thought … did we find fish or more snags? His rod bent and then started pumping with live fish action and just like that we were into some fish. Ken was able to bring the fish to the side of the boat and we saw the unmistakable silvery flash of a crappie and a slab at that!

It was on at that point, everyone immediately adjusted their terminal equipment to imitate the same type set up.

One thing that I’ve learned over the years is that when a setup is working don’t try to reinvent a better one. This set up was simple and effective; one small bobber, a split shot, a live minnow on a jig head.

The jig head that I was using was a solid silver metallic jig that was down about 2 feet from the top of the water. We found that placing the minnow on the jig worked best at mid minnow behind the dorsal fin. The crappies would pick off your minnow if you tried the tail or head areas.

Papermouths are very aggressive but they can be light biters as well.

Soon we were all bringing in some decent crappies and I was impressed with their size and fight on lighter tackle. Every now and then we would get a slab blue gill or channel cat as a bonus catch. We would keep any of the perch, blue gill or crappies that were larger and anything under or near 9 inches was released. Pymatuning has a 20-fish limit for crappies over 9 inches that was just enacted for this fishing season.

It’s a good rule because of overfishing and many limits of 50 fish in the past of all sized fish has depleted the quality of fishing. Once you get into the slab sized fish you can see why the smaller guys are really not what you want.

I was pulling in my line when a flash of a fish went by the boat and I has on a decent fish. He was strong enough to pull all of my line and tackle into deeper water and I lost him on the second run.

My wire hook was straightened out on the jig head and that was that! Fishermen like to theorize what happened or what fish did that to the jig head and hook. Likely it wasn’t a pan fish but either a channel cat, smallmouth bass or walleye. I know it wasn’t a musky or largemouth bass by its actions so it will go down as the one that got away.

About the time, it was hitting 3 p.m. we had boated about 30 nice crappies, some perch and a few bluegills. Anyone who fishes for table fare knows that this was a nice mess of fish.

Ken was elected to take the catch and get them filleted out for a family dinner at the Bryan household. Ken told me that his grandsons Nash and Luke can do some eating and this was just about enough for them to start on. Laughing I made the comment, “I guess volleyballs aren’t the only thing those boys smash!”

Until we meet again get out there and do something wild!

Jay Hewitt is an outdoors columnist for the butler eagle