Page 14 - Crappie NOW - April 2018

Story & photos by Brent Frazee

When Bill Hartman started fly When the crappies move shallow to spawn
fishing for crappie in the Kansas Flint in farm ponds, Hartman uses his fly rod to
Hills, he had a gallery. catch them.
Landowners were accustomed to
seeing fishermen cast spinning gear for
the big fish in their ponds and watershed had come to town.
lakes. But using a fly rod and small flies “The landowners would get their
– well, this was something they had to families together and they’d come out
see. to see the nutty professor (Hartman is
“Back in those days, you were a former administrator at Emporia State
looked at as an eccentric when you University) out there in a belly boat, fly
fished with a fly rod in the Flint Hills,” fishing on their ponds.
said Hartman, 68, who lives in Emporia, “They had never seen anything like
Kansas. “I was like the elephant that that before.”

14 Crappie NOW April 2018