M_S_2015_04_

8 Mississippi Sportsman^ | April 2015

I

t is an internal struggle many Mississippi

sportsmen and sportswomen face every spring

— choosing between two very passionate out-

door pursuits at the peak of their seasons.

Some try to balance both,

but it usually ends badly, and

you can take that from one

April fool who knows it all too

well.

So how does one pick

between the crappie spawning

cycle and the turkey gobbling

season?

For some — and, again, take

it from someone who knows

— the decision is made simple

based on a person’s skill levels

at the two.

Turkey hunting, as fascinat-

ing as it is, is really hard.

Catching crappie during the

spawn, while not always easy,

isn’t exactly rocket science, as

one Barnett Reservoir regular

describes it.

“Find some decent-looking

shallow water with the kind of

cover and bottoms that crappie want for spawning,

and just drop a jig around enough of it and — bam!

— you will get hit,” Jackson’s Randy Baxter said.

“Well, there’s that way, and then there’s this other

method that I admit I’ve used more often. It’s basi-

cally the same strategy, with just a little tweak.

“Find some decent-looking shallow water with the

kind of cover and bottoms that crappie want for

spawning, and if you see a bunch of boats working it

with long jig poles — bam! — that’s where you need

to be.”

Just try that latter technique while turkey hunting

without Kevlar Mossy Oak, and see how that works

out for you.

Funny thing about this time of the year: You tend

to see a lot of crappie fishermen later on in the

morning, fishing with full camouflage.

“You see that more on the weekends than on week-

days,” said. D.K. Partridge of Byram. “There’s a lot of

us who are limited to weekend hunting and fishing.

With only a six- or seven-week turkey season during

which the crappie spawn will hit its peak, we have

to fit both of them in every weekend, or at least try

to. What that does is basically make Mondays really,

really hard to deal with.

“But it’s worth it for the few times that my partner

and I have gotten a bird in the morning and a limit

of crappie in the afternoon. I count the times we’ve

done that on both thumbs — twice. However, there

have been many times that we got a limit of slabs

and had close calls with gobblers, either before or

after we went fishing. I call that a win.”

Mississippians should be proud that we face such

a dilemma. We are blessed with many great crappie-

fishing lakes, and we have a good, albeit very cyclic,

turkey population.

It might not be easy, but it sure is nice to have a

choice. ■

UPDATE

Outdoor

Bobby Cl eveland

with

Crappie or turkey? Tough call in April

Turkey hunting is a spring

passion many sportsmen

can’t give up, no matter

how hot the crappie

fishing gets.

Bobby Cleveland has covered

sports in Mississippi for over 38

years. A native of Hattiesburg

and graduate of the University of

Southern Mississippi, Cleveland

lives on Ross Barnett Reservoir

near Jackson with his wife Pam.

He can be reached at

[email protected].

Leigh Partridge

Peak time for spawning and gobbling in Mississippi