A limit of crappie fun

These 40 D’Arbonne crappie were among the ones caught this weekend that went to the crappie.com fish fry!

I have a feeling that if the crappie.com folks came to the lake and found it dry, they would still have a good time. In fact, no matter how many fish they catch, they always limit out on fun. That’s just who they are. But these guys are great fishermen and didn’t find Lake D’Arbonne dry this weekend when they came for their annual gathering at the State Park. There was also plenty of food to eat at the potluck dinner on Friday night for fishermen and their families.

In fact, even though fishing was slow, they caught plenty of crappie to feed nearly 100 folks here for the weekend with leftovers to spare.

“We just had a fantastic time,” said DocWaldo (who actually occasionally goes by his real name of Mark Weldon). “The fishing wasn’t great, but it was terrible either. I’ve seen it a lot worse in other places!”

Weldon heads up the annual affair and coordinates the activities, but everybody pitches in to help and make sure everyone has fun.

That fun included a record big crappie pot for the biggest crappie Friday and Saturday. Lake D’Arbonne’s own SouthernChuter (James Morgan) won big crappie on Friday with a 1.70 pound crappie. Saturday Big John (John Ackel) landed a 1.69 pounder as his first fish. Big John was fishing with Heath Lovitt.

Some of the group gathered Thursday night, but the meet (fish meat?) was really on Friday and Saturday. The anglers caught fish mostly in deeper water and equally on jigs and shiners.

Part of the fun was handing out dozens of door prizes donated by crappie.com sponsors. The group got a special treat when John Godwin and Jay Stone of Duck Commander donated 10 B’n’M Duck Commander jig poles to the group for prizes. Other prizes ranged from more jig rods and poles to bait keepers to jigs to pickled quail eggs and muscadine jelly!

We’ve shared a couple of photos of the event, but if you want to see more, go to crappie.com and click on FORUM at the top of the page. From there, go to the “Louisiana” button and click. You’ll see a heading for D’Arbonne gathering. Have fun. These guys (and gals) sure do.

We’ll have some more photos and information from the weekend here tomorrow…

Winners of the B’n’M Duck Commander crappie poles!