Page 10 - Crappie NOW | July 2016

By Vic Attardo

Bobby Mustang starts most mornings about 4 a.m., launching
his boat, on a summer’s day, with a distant red glow in an otherwise
dark sky.
Let me say quickly, I’m not sure Mustang believes in the adage,
“The early bird gets the worm,” or if he just wants to avoid getting his
three girls ready for school. Or camp, or horsey practice. Let me also
add, Mustang it not his real last name. He asked me to disguise it in
order to save his marriage.
I’m not sure a guy who rolls out for recreation at 4 a.m., four or
five days a week, has a marriage that’s going anywhere — except
to the Missouri lawyers at Cordell and Cordell. Mustang says that
about himself so it’s no great revelation, but another good reason to
alter his name.
Anyway Bobby Mustang is a heck of a crappie fisherman and
I often see him holding more crappie by 8 a.m. than most anglers
catch all day. He quits fishing at eight to do his day job. “Here’s the
way I think about morning fishing,” Mustang said. “The hotter and
the brighter it’s been, and the hotter and brighter it’s going to be, the
more you want to get out early.”
When I fished with Mustang on the Harris Chain of Lakes in
Florida, I got the real definition of what hot and bright means. In mid-
summer it’s stifling, even before the sun comes up, and then as the
sun crests the shoreline’s low trees, the expanding humidity makes
it more intense. Once the white orb is released into full view, you’re
already downed two bottles of water and searching for your third.
The breakfast Gatorade isn’t too far behind.
But Mustang is smart in the sun. His boat position on the water
keeps us in the shade as long as solarly possible. In the middle of
July, he’s working the shoreline weeds where he dips a good number
of crappie.
“I’m playing a pattern here,” he tells me. “The weather has been
brutal for days and there’s no change in sight. The crappie aren’t
happy but they have to eat. Some of them head into the channels
during the day and stay there. You can catch them in the deeper
water during the day but it’s a struggle.
“In the evening a good number of them roam into the weeded
shallows and they stay there overnight. They eat during the night but
I don’t think they’re quite satisfied.
“But in the early morning, things in the shallows are waking up so to speak. There’s a
period of an hour, maybe two, when there’s a lot going on under the weeds and certainly the
crappie are eating.
“This is the when I get after them — in the summer.” As if on clue Mustang plucked a
good crappie from the outer edge of a thick pad field. It was his fifth in less than an hour.
“There’s very good fishing before the sun comes up and through the first hour of full
light,” he went on. “Then it usually shuts off like a switch. Once the sun gets on the weeds,
most crappie leave the shallows and head for the channels. Some will work back very tight to
the bank but these fish are hard to get at. Just poling a boat into those spots chases them off.

10 Crappie NOW July 2016