OUTDOORS: Protect bass: catch crappie

"It's a mystery to me why some fishermen become obsessed with a single species," I say. But Danny doesn't hear me. He's fiddling with a new lure to put on his spinning rod.

It's a sunny morning on this Goochland County lake. The air is cool, but there's no wind. It's supposed to get to 50 today. I'm in thick, flannel-lined pants. Danny's wearing shorts. Depending on how the weather breaks, one of us will be sorry, the other happy, with our clothing choice.

Winter temperatures, even in milder winters like this one, tend to make fish less active. Largemouth bass will hang out all day, suspended deep in the water column at a temperature they like. They feed, of course, but not voraciously like they do throughout the summer.

There are big bass in this lake — the unofficial record is 14 pounds — and that doesn't happen by accident. Actually, it can happen by accident, but it won't last without human intervention. The lake is full of Virginia's usual suspects: bass, bluegill and shell crackers. It also has a whole mess of crappie.

Crappie are able predators and prolific breeders. They can hammer a lake's bluegill population, taking away the largemouth's favorite food. If they reach a certain size, crappie can do serious damage to young bass numbers as well. It's a delicate balancing act that needs constant human fine tuning.

"Bass lakes turn into crappie lakes eventually, if you don't manage them," Danny says about an hour later, anchoring over a crappie hole and switching from a bass-specific crankbait to a deeper-diving crappie setup. As he hands me a new rod, we both note the slight breeze that's picked up and the sun gone behind thickening clouds

That's really why we're here — to not let this lake turn into a crappie lake. If that happens, as far as Danny is concerned, you'll be able to describe the lake with a different spelling of the same word. Not because crappie fishing isn't fun — it is — but because big-bass hunting is a whole different kind of fun.

This brings me back to the single-species obsessed. Danny's not one of them; neither am I. But they are out there. Lots of them. There are many websites devoted exclusively to crappie, a fish bass anglers consider by-catch.

That is, except for this time of year. When winter bass are sluggish and selective, crappie remain willing dupes. Maybe that explains their popularity. The fact that they also fry up nicely in a pan probably helps, as well. Danny estimates he's removed 300 crappie from the lake this winter. All of them have gone to his friend Juan's dinner table.

Before reaching this crappie hole, we caught a couple of bass, nothing particularly huge. There's a steep drop off in this area. He hurls out a white soft plastic lure, a swimbait-looking beast, with a jighead that helps it get down deep. He twitches it near the bottom where the crappie usually are.

Boom! The first one hits. Into the livewell he goes. More free food for Juan. One less bass-eating crappie.

We fish this hole for 20 minutes or so, but our luck isn't as good as Danny had hoped, so we move on. Some guys will sit over holes for hours working worms along every inch of the bottom. Danny prefers to keep moving. Worm fishing bores him.

That's fine with me. I'm all for doing my crappie-crushing duty, but I also know that behemoth bass lurk in these waters. The more territory we cover, I figure, the better chance, even if it's a small one, of catching a lunker. But our luck stays middling for the next couple of hours. Danny works the boat along the shoreline. We switch from bass to crappie setups and back again. Even at the dam, where the water is deep, we can't get a bite. We've caught fish, but Danny talks about 30- or 40-fish days when the crappie are biting.

No matter. There's plenty of action above the water's surface. We've seen a red-tailed hawk, a bald eagle and two giant great blue herons. We watched a pair of buffleheads zip low across the lake and two mallards take off in the direction of the James River. Kingfishers have made their noisy rounds, and a male blue jay and cardinal even shared the same tree branch near us.

It's downright cold now, and my pants are the only thing protecting me from a biting wind. By the time we turn for home, we've caught five or six crappie and five bass, but there's one more honey hole remaining. A beaver has dammed a creek where it enters the lake. There's good structure in the water and a flat, grassy area beneath us. When we pull up, I'm surprised to see spawning beds already scoured out of the flats.

With crankbait running hard along the bottom, I lure a respectable bass to hand, then release it to fight another day. It's big enough that it doesn't have to worry about marauding crappie gangs. Fishermen do, however, if they want to catch big bass.

That's an obsession I get.