I took my boys Cleve and Joe to Hickory Creek hoping for a good number of culls to keep the filets stocked in the freezer. We've always caught a lot of Bass there as well as always catching a few nice Crappie. Little did we know how well this sweet little lake would come through for us again. It was a day with a lot of rain and wind. We fished most of the day trying to take advantage of the wind and positioning our separate watercraft to track a specific drift. The Crappie were mainly stacked up in the deepest section of the lake, the Bass shallower. We all had our own preferences as far as favorite baits. Cleve stuck to his Z Craw, Joe to his Mag Fatty Z Man bait, and I stuck with a Z Man Bang Stick most of the day. We all fished a Junebug or an Orange Green Pumpkin color. The Crappie were hitting all of these baits as well as the Bass.

By the time the day was over we had caught a total of 164 fish. We culled 63 Bass under 14 inches. We culled a total of 81 Crappie.  20 Bass were over 14 inches and returned to the lake. We had a great time but paid for it by having to spend an hour and a half cleaning fish that evening. One of the nice things about the Holiday Inn Express in Crockett is they have a gravel overflow lot behind their main parking with electrical outlets on the light standards and don't mind if you plug in your extension cords  for the electric filet knives and clean away. Of course we are very careful to bag all the remains to haul away.

As always we had a really nice visit with the owner, Wade. He always like to come down for a nice chat and is so hospitable. I don't know if he knows it, but he might have the best Crappie fishery in the State. Most of those Crappie are bragging size. It was nice to catch a few bass that demonstrate that the culling effort is definitely producing some bigger fish. My son Joe caught a bass that was an ounce shy of 5 pounds.

We finished the day fired up for the chance at a big Bass the next day at Grapeland Bennett!

Al Burns