My fiancee pam and I took off for the weekend up to Chelan County's Antilion Lake ffor some pre spawn Crappie fishing. It was definately one of my most momorable and successful trips ever! We arrived friday night, May 8th set up camp and launched the Jon boat. Where we concentrated our efforts, there were hundreds of decent Crappie suspended in the gin clear water, about 2 feet down. From 7:30 to 8:30 p.m., only Pam landed a nice 13" Brown trout and one crappie.... I hadn't caught a single fish. That was untill the sun weht down. In a span of a half hour, while I was untangling "her" rat's nest reel, she caughr and landed 20 crappie on consequtive casts! ( (on my pole no less!) we eneded up with 27 fish, with around a dozen Crappie kept. The next Morning at around 9:30 a.m. we took the boat up to the far south end. Fish activity was strangely absent. I put on an orange and smoke power Nymph, left in my boat by my pal bluefin Loui, but caught only 3 fish off of the Concete tube, (all on that Nymph.) It was more of the same later, where it seemed that the only thing the crappie wanted was that Nymoh. I gave Pam my ultralite and let her catch a few on it too. As the day progressed, we sight fished slightly deeper water at 10' to 12 feet. Active, catchable crappie, were holding at the base of isolated weeds and in the shadows of scattered chunk rocks and boulders. The suspended crappie we saw were universally negative, and would not bite. I alternated fishing a red/ silver speckle/ glitter skirt on a 1/48th oz specialty jighead. On one cattail point, just as a rain squall approached, we caught nearly 30 crappie and the majority of the bigger 9 to 10 inch fish bit during the rain that followed. (A slow drop and twitch of the jig was what they wanted.) So I switched to a 2 1/2 inch Smelt Berkley gulp minnow on that same jighead and nearly all the Crappie caught on it were bigger fish. It also accounted for 3 German browns as well. In short, we caught 89 fish by my count, including browns, sunfish ( all released) and crappie. We filleted a couple dozen fish, and we shared a few fillets with an elderly friend of mine.(Umm...Not you bluefin Loui... lol... An intresting note: This Lake can be very tough to fish...Attention to detail and bait presentation + color selection made the all difference for Pam and I.. All the other fishermen on this lake that we talked too only averaged 2 to 3 fish per person. Site Member Larry Longley and his 3 person boat party arrived in the afternoon. I shared some tips with him and they caught about a dozen fish in a couple of hours. This is a very, very healthy lake. Judging by the numbers of fish that we saw suspended, including the negative biters, thier overall size and quality, and combine that with selective harvest practices, Antilion Lake should remain an awesome Crappie fishing destination for seasons to come! (Pics only on disposable camera..).The Jigmeister.

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