Wake Up to 2:00 AM Cold Weather Crappie Fishing at Alabama’s Lake Guntersville
Day 2: Three Lake Guntersville Anglers Explain the Outstanding Wintertime Crappie Fishing There Even in Cold and Nasty Weather
Editor’s Note: No one really wants to get up at 2:00 am on a cold morning, dress like the Pillsbury Dough Boy and go out on any lake in pitch-black dark. The only reason to answer that 2:00 am alarm is the vision of big slab crappie coming to your dip net on almost every cast at Lake Guntersville.
  If I hoped to crappie fish effectively and attentively at 2:00 am on a cold morning, I knew I needed to be reinforced with large doses of warm coffee. So, when the alarm went off, I jumped out of bed, dressed hurriedly and went downstairs to my friend Captain Phillip Criss’s kitchen where he had two big pots of coffee brewing. He said, “Go ahead, and get yourself a big cup of coffee to drink on the way to the lake. I’ve already run hot water in this thermos for you. You can fill the thermos up with coffee the way you like it and drink it while we’re on the water.” Criss also got another cup of coffee and a thermos for himself, and we headed for Goose Pond Marina (http://goosepond.org/facilities/marina/) at Lake Guntersville. There we met up with the three musketeers of early-morning crappie fishing – Calvin McLaughlin, who works at Goose Pond and fishes every morning from 2:00 am until an hour or two after sun-up, and Lawrence Shepherd and his son, Kevin Shepherd. The Shepherds are so infected with the crappie-fishing bug at Lake Guntersville that they’ve left their homes in Kentucky and bought new homes in Guntersville. “We just love to catch crappie,” Lawrence Shepherd announces. When I questioned him about why he rolled out from under the covers on his bed at 1:30 am to reach the boat ramp by 2:00 am, he explains, “To fish under the bridges or on either side of culverts that run under the different roads around the lake, you’ve got to get to those places long before daylight to have a place to fish. You almost can step from boat to boat under the bridges and walk all the way across the water from one bank to the other at this time of year.”
  “Often during the coldest part of the winter, crappie fishermen will be lined-up on the banks to have an opportunity to cast their jigs or minnows under the culverts,” Kevin Shepherd reports. “Once an angler catches crappie, he or she puts the crappie on a stringer or in an ice chest and moves to the back of the line. When you see a large line of cars parked on both sides of bridges and culverts on Lake Guntersville, you know the crappie bite is on, and the crappie fishermen are stacked in these areas.” Criss smiled as he added, “And, the craziest thing about wintertime crappie fishing at Lake Guntersville is that the colder and the nastier the weather; the better the crappie bite.”
To contact Captain Phillip Criss about fishing Lake Guntersville, call him at 205-461-5549, or email him at pdcriss@hotmail.com.
To learn much more about crappie fishing, get John E. Phillips’ Kindle eBooks and some print books, “Crappie: How to Catch Them Fall & Winter,” “Crappie: How to Catch Them Spring and Summer” and “Catch Cold Water Crappie Now” by clicking on each, or go to www.amazon.com/kindle-ebooks, type in the name of the book, and download it to your Kindle, and/or download a Kindle app for your iPad, SmartPhone or computer.
About the Author
John Phillips, winner of the 2012 Homer Circle Fishing Award for outstanding fishing writer by the American Sportfishing Association (ASA) and the Professional Outdoor Media Association (POMA), the 2008 Crossbow Communicator of the year and the 2007 Legendary Communicator chosen for induction into the National Fresh Water Hall of Fame, is a freelance writer (over 6,000 magazine articles for about 100 magazines and several thousand newspaper columns published), magazine editor, photographer for print media as well as industry catalogues (over 25,000 photos published), lecturer, outdoor consultant, marketing consultant, book author and daily internet content provider with an overview of the outdoors. Click here for more information and a list of all the books available from John E. Phillips.
|
