Senior duo takes crappie seriously

WILSONVILLE -- Tommy McDougal is serious about crappie.

Never mind, for a moment, the Rougemont man's fishing setup, a 21-foot Carolina Skiff that has been transformed into a crappie-catching contraption.

The boat is also especially rigged to enable McDougal, who had a lung collapse a couple of years ago, to be able to fish. It has a special rail built near the bow to give him support. There's vinyl tubing to provide air from oxygen tanks wherever McDougal is situated on his boat.

"I try to keep going," said McDougal, who always fishes with friend Henry Ward. "Just because I've got some disease doesn't mean I've got to give up everything."

These days, McDougal, 71, and Ward, 74, don't concern themselves with much else than crappie when it comes to fishing. And to see them target the tasty panfish is to witness crappie-catching broken down to a science.

They didn't invent the "spider-rigging" method. It only seems that way. While others "fished" around the U.S. 64 bridge over Jordan Lake on a recent Thursday morning, they "caught."

Upon arrival next to the bridge, Ward anchored the boat, and both men noted the 32-feet depth on their fish finders, which also marked fish believed to be crappie anywhere from nine to 13 feet down.

"This is some of the deepest water we fish," Ward said.

Rigged for crappie

Spider-rigging is a method that allows crappie anglers to effectively fish with several lines in the water at various depths until a pattern is picked up. On McDougal's boat, there were four rod holders on each of the four corners of his vessel. He worked the eight rods in the front. Ward worked the eight in the back.

The rods, affixed with light spinning reels, were designed especially for this type of fishing. They're three-piece 14- and 16-foot rods made by B'n'M Fishing.

In the rod holder, the rods sit parallel to the water's surface. With the rod tips sitting just above the water, the anglers deliberately set the 1/8-ounce jigs, tipped with minnows, just above the school, which is 11 to 16 feet down. The jigs are tied on with a loop knot, to allow the jig better action.

"Crappie are down there," McDougal said. "You just have to find the depth they want. They won't go down to it. But they'll come up to it."

The jigs were all the same color.

"We love this pink," McDougal said, asking for a jig out of a tackle box with a large tray flush with more than a hundred of the pink jigs, which were custom poured with larger-than-average gold hooks.

Finding a bite

The men's eyes constantly scan their spreads for a bite. When a crappie grabs one of these, the lengthy crappie rods bend into the water, and usually the mere act of lifting the rod will set the hook.

"Put me down for a bite," said Ward, who missed the first known bite on this morning.

But, early on, the crappie weren't much interested.

"We should have done caught a fish by now," Ward said. "Wanna move?"

Still, this particular week was not expected to be a great one for crappie fishing. The duo is waiting for the water temperature to drop to about 58 degrees. On this day, it was 64. But that would not get in the way.

Ward brought up the anchor, with all 16 lines still in the water, and the two steered the boat's electric trolling motor with a pair of wireless remote controls.

"We have to go slow, because if you go to fast, the baits come up to the surface," said Ward, who moved the boat on the motor's slowest speed.

Reeling them in

When the crappie did start biting, the bites were steady, and fish flowed into the live well. McDougal, whose offerings were deepest (closer to 18 feet) was the first to start catching fish. And Ward was quick to follow.

Soon, most of the lines had been adjusted to the deeper water. Crappie up to 16 inches were not uncommon on a morning that netted 11 keepers. Other boats in the area struggled to bring up a few smallish crappie in the same amount of time.

That's not uncommon for each of these men. In May, the duo was fishing a Piedmont Crappie Classics tournament on Falls Lake when McDougal landed a 3.2-pound white crappie, which was four ounces under the state record.

It was one of many highlights in McDougal's fishing life, which keep him going. McDougal, a former smoker, has pulmonary fibrosis, and unless he gets a lung transplant, he's stuck lugging around the oxygen tank.

But the doctors tell him he's not ready for the operation.

"They want me to lose 15 pounds right in the middle," McDougal said.

He spends several days a week exercising and getting treatment related to his condition. This comes before fishing, even in the fall, just as the crappie fishing is supposed to be getting better.

McDougal won't be quick to give up crappie fishing, a skill he has been refining for 40 years.

"I'm going to fish as much as I can until I die," McDougal said.

And he figures to have many years of fishing left.

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