It’s late morning and windy. The quite small squirrel tail zirdle bug I have been slinging and slapping around on my 3wt ends up in the water each time, but not necessarily where I want it to. It doesn’t matter; a small yellow perch or an ambitious bass will take it after a few strips of my line. The rain comes now for a quick springtime drenching of my sweatshirt before it stops and the sun shows again. However, the wind is ever persistent in its needling, making sure that my great day of catching at the lake has at least some sort of annoyance. However, in retrospect, it wasn’t that great. Sure, after two hours from the shore I have accrued thirty two bass, forty eight yellow perch, one red ear sunfish, and a single black crappie. The main issue is that I came for the crappie, and I went home with three nine inch perch. Not much for a family meal, but it will make the boy and his mother happy.

Two days before, I had been fishing the creek below the lake and running on no luck for brookies. It was a beautiful day though with sunshine over me but a dark and rainy haze over the Selkirks. After the winter that we had, any rain is welcome over that mountain range that houses all the creeks I hold dearly to my heart. The streams need it, the trout need it, and we need it to help in taming the high potential for a smoky summer that we have coming up. Furthermore, there is just something about a rainy day when you are not the one getting rained on. Don’t get me wrong as I love the rain. I lived in Portland for nearly a decade where, on average, it rains 150-160 days a year. The Oregon Coast, as rainy and windy as it seems it always is, is by far my favorite place in the entire world. And to be fair, rain on the water always makes the catching part of fishing a bit better. The rain provides more cover for us, the ones hunting the fish, it reinvigorates the water with oxygen allowing the fish to be more energetic and active, and the drop in barometric pressure triggers a survival instinct in the fish forcing it to want to eat more. So, as I was sitting on that bank of the lake after moving up to it and sipping on some coffee, there was a part of me that wished that rain came down the mountains a bit.

In about ten minutes, it did.

I tied on a #16 Hudson Caddis and didn’t dress it with any floatant to make it more like a wet fly. I was going to be targeting panfish here; no need to try all that hard. As the rain came near, I cast across the shoreline to my left and waited for the fly to sink a bit before I played with it. However, I didn’t have the chance to see it lower in the water. A fish slammed it on the top and took off. I strip set the hook and played the fish. It took off to the depths; I pulled it back. It ran towards me and I stripped in line as fast as I could. It darted left and right until I had it in the net. A black crappie. A large black crappie. Over a pound, probably pushing closer to a pound and a half. It was fat, and after a quick measurement with my shoe, it was over twelve inches. Happy with the first catch of the day, I unhooked it and let it go before kicking myself due to realizing the sheer size of fillets I could have sliced off that absolute unit of a fish. For the next half hour I had before I had to head out to pick up my son from his friend’s house and take him back home to the rest of the family, I had a heyday with pulling crappie in on the same small fly. None of them were close to the size of the first one of the day, but all in all, it just felt good to pull in fish after fish following the poor showing in fly fishing I had during our weird winter.

Two days later, I sat on the shoreline where I pondered the day of fishing I had. Forty eight perch is a high number, sure, but the fish are dumb (though very delicious). To catch the perch, it was a simple cast out as far into the lake I could cast in the wind, let my little bug settle and then twitch it once. Nine times out of ten brought a perch in. None that were big enough to fillet, and if you have ever scaled a small perch, you know that it is not at all fun to do so. A bluegill or a crappie? Scales come right off, simple as. A perch has a bit stronger armor on them, and you really have to work it to get the scales off, especially when they are smaller. But they taste so dang good.

The thirty two largemouth bass were another story. If I am out bass fishing, there is nothing I love more than catching bass. If I am not bass fishing, however, they are one of my least favorite fish to catch. I don’t go largemouth bass fishing all that much. Contrary to popular belief, I think they are one of the worst game fish. They can fight, especially when they get bigger, but even a two to three pound bass (and these are old boys in our waters up here in Boundary County; bass don’t get a lot of time to grow up here each year compared to the southern states) don’t provide much of a fight. Pound for pound, a bluegill or other sunfish fights harder. Largemouth bass, to me, remind me a lot of pikeminnow–they fight a good fight for about three to four seconds before just kind of going limp. Of course, when that bass sees a net they might fight again but they will come in easy after that. The largemouth bass phenomenon exists only to sell expensive baitcasters, expensive bass lures, and allow people to hoot and holler loudly from their boat after they caught a dumb fish that will eat an unbaited hook as quickly as they will the $10 lure. They aren’t great eating, people don’t harvest them enough to let the big ones grow bigger, and they are just kind of boring to me.

And when I am targeting crappie, I really don’t want to hook into a bass.

The black crappie is underrated up in this neck of the woods. They fight well, they are absolutely beautiful fish with their black splotches over their silvery green skin and nearly iridescent fins, and they taste phenomenal and provide a good amount of meat. Especially that delicious, fatty meat that comes off their spine. I love to eat a good, fresh trout as much as the next man, but the crappie (and other panfish) hold a dear place in my heart and on certain days, I would consider the crappie one of the best fish to put on a dinner plate.

But this day, all I could catch were bass and small perch, and I was expected to bring home a plethora of crappie for all the grabbing hands at home to pull apart and eat. The only one I caught was very small and not worth the effort. Two days earlier, it was nearly every cast. Well, black crappie are schooling fish, and school was not in session at this portion of the lake anymore. The big bully bass and the brown nosing perch were in the front desks today. Sure, you get the occasionally loose cannon off on its own, but for the most part–in my experience–if you catch one crappie, you will probably catch another where that one had been. I have never had a disappointing day where I caught nearly eighty fish in two hours, but this was close.

But why was I disappointed? Sure, I hyped up the fact that I was going to bring home a bunch of crappie for a nice panfish dinner, served with a humble potato dish, a green salad, and some cilantro rice. I was able to get away from the house and the kids and the mess for a bit because I had mentioned the crappie dinner. There is an air of disappointment each time it happens, and it happens often. It always seems that if my wife tells me she wants me to go catch a fish or two for dinner, the planets align and it works out. But if I say I am going to do it, well, I end up flat on my face. It makes it feel like soon she will stop believing that I can do it, and my fish harvesting trips will be cut down to zilch.

Let’s hope not.

But after soaking in it for a while, I can look at the day and realize that even though I didn’t catch what I came for, I caught enough. I could have kept more perch but that ain’t my style (and I really didn’t want to scale any more of them than I had to). But we had enough. And that is just life. Loads of disappointment with realization asterisk’d on the end that it really isn’t all that bad. Just be happy with what you got, and be stoked you didn’t get skunked.

Because getting skunked in one of these lakes would just be tragic and nigh impossible.

Tight lines out there, friends.