The Weeknight Pier Trip That Filled the Stringer With Crappie

The pier at Ross Barnett empties out around suppertime. The families fold up their camp chairs, the pontoons head for the ramp, and for about an hour you get the whole rail to yourself. That hour is the reason I quit waiting for Saturday and started taking the kids on weeknights instead.

Last April we took one of those evenings. Callie was eleven then and had been after me for a month to let her rig her own jig. Ben was nine and still wanted a bobber and a worm, which was fine by me. Wyatt had a ballgame, so it was just the three of us and the tackle box riding in the back of the Tahoe.

The box we were carrying is the one I put together in March, and the tray Callie wanted is the middle one, the one holding the Crappie Magnet Best of the Best Kit. A hundred and fifteen pieces of jig heads, split tail bodies and E-Z floats in one case, sorted by the job they do instead of by which kid they belong to.

I bought that kit the first week of March, along with the rest of the gear, after a cold Saturday in February that I would rather not live through again. The old discount combos bird nested every third cast, Ben got teary, and we were back in the Tahoe inside an hour. When I unpacked that afternoon there were loose hooks rolling around in the carpet. That was the end of zip bags for this family.

So the kit went into the tackle box and the tackle box went into the back of the Tahoe, and on that Tuesday in April it finally got a real workout.

Callie rigged her own jig, dropped it beside a piling, and had a crappie on before I finished baiting Ben's hook.

Here is what I noticed once we were actually fishing. On the loose jigs we used before, the tails folded together in the box and stayed folded, so the bait went through the water looking like a pencil. The split tail on these bodies stays open. The listing says the body has very little action of its own, and that is true, and it is also the reason Callie could hold one still beside a piling and get bit while I was still fiddling with Ben's bobber.

The heads are Double Cross jig heads with a J hook and a spear point, high carbon steel and plastic, and they survived two kids bouncing them off the pier planks all evening. I did not lose one to a bent hook that night. I lost two to the water, which is a different problem and one I have not solved.

By the time the light went orange we had about a dozen crappie in the bucket, enough to clean and fry the next night. Callie rigged every one of her own hooks. Ben caught bluegill on his bobber and worm and could not have cared less about the crappie, which is exactly right for nine years old.

Now the honest part. The pieces are small. Ben's fingers are still learning, and we lost a couple of bodies in the grass at my aunt's pond and one in the Tahoe carpet that I found a week later. If I am taking the kids catfishing, this kit stays shut in the box, because a big hook and a sinker is the whole program on a catfish trip. It is a crappie and bluegill kit, not a do-everything kit, and pretending otherwise would just cost you money.

One thing I did not expect to matter as much as it does: having the floats in the same tray as the heads and bodies means Ben can fish his way and Callie can fish hers without me digging through three bags in the dark. On a Tuesday night with two kids and a school night coming, that is worth more than any single piece in the kit.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

If you were across my kitchen table right now, with a kid or two of your own and a pier you can get to on a weeknight, here is what I would say. Do not buy a hundred things. Buy the one tray that covers the fish you actually have in front of you. For us that is crappie and bluegill, and the Crappie Magnet Best of the Best Kit covers both without me having to decide anything at seven in the evening with a bobber in one hand and a worm in the other.

I would also tell you the kit will not turn your kid into a fisherman. Callie got good because she rigged her own jig about forty times that spring, lost some, and got bit on enough of them to want to keep going. What the Crappie Magnet kit did was take away the part where she had to ask me which body went with which head. Everything in that tray is meant to go together. That sounds like a small thing. On a school night with the light going, it is the whole reason we stayed another hour.