M_S_2015_04_

114 Mississippi Sportsman^ | April 2015

Cracking the code

Aggressive and gluttonous as any schooling fish, chinquapin

are hardly picky. Nevertheless, catering to their tastes and prefer-

ences will earn you more love.

Here are some thoughts:

Best chinquapin baits

Natural Baits

A hungry chinquapin won’t turn down a cricket or grass shrimp,

but given their natural tendency to forage on freshwater mus-

sels — hence, the name “shellcracker” — these fish hold a great

fondness for worms.

Similar in consistency to those mollusk meals, an active wiggler

worm won’t last long in the midst of a ’cracker convention.

Glynn “Catch” Cormier uses wigglers now and then, but he

prefers plumper, meatier cold worms. With these beefy baits, he’ll

use only a chunk to avoid feeding the fish free samples.

A smaller piece, he said, forces them to commit and grab the hook.

For his worm presentations, Cormier employs two rigging

options:

• Small Jigs — Impaling a chunk of worm on the point of a 3/16-
  ounce jighead allows him to bump along the bottom to feel for
  those hard spots and locate feeding fish.
  “I like to work the jig and keep it moving,” Cormier said. “I think
  they like a more-active presentation.”


• Modified Dropshot — Starting with a 1/8- to 1/4-ounce egg
  sinker, Cormier runs his line through the weight, brings the tag
  end up and ties a uni knot around the standing end.
  Before tying the knot, he pulls through enough line to leave
  about a 6-inch tag end from which he’ll tie a No. 8 cricket hook.
  “This rig lets me fish right along the bottom, but the leader gets
  the bait away from the sinker,” Cormier explained. “You need a
  long-shank hook because the fish might swallow the hook and I
  need to get it out.”

Artificials

From small tubes, to tiny crawfish bodies, soft plastics on 3/16-

ounce jigheads will tempt any redear.

DOA’s 2-inch shrimp looks a lot like the grass shrimp panfish

love, so pulling this bait across the right spots on a split-shot rig

or a light Carolina rig will surely get some attention.

“One of my favorite artificials is a 1/32-ounce beetle spin,” Cormier

said. “If the fish are sluggish, I may tip it with a piece of worm.

They seem to hit it off the bottom as it’s coming back up.”

Light jigs also can tempt chinquapin.

In the Atchafalaya Basin, McCardy has developed a dependable

technique that enables him to hold an enticing bait in the target

zone around those cypress roots.