"Steve B" wrote in message
...

plus they want you to buy a magic light.

"Magic" light? LOL. Me and a buddy of mine used to drift fish live bait
for crappie at night. We would use my canoe with a propane lantern in the
middle on a stem mounted to a bulk tank. The minnows would swarm around the
canoe. Usually little red shiners 1.5-2 inches long. We would fish under
the minnows with larger (3-4 inches) threadfin shad and catch BIG crappie.
We never caught a ton, but the ones we caught tended to be a lot bigger.
They would run from 2 - 4 pounds. My biggest doing that was 4lbs 8ozs. I
don't think we ever caught any small crappie doing that. We also caught
channel cats and soft shelled turtles. A good night would produce 8-10 of
those big crappie, and a slow night might give us 2-3, but like I said.
They were all big.

The climate is nice here, and we would continue to catch crappie night
fishing like that into late December. Just had to wear a decent jacket.

The best nights had a light breeze. Setup on the upwind side of an area and
let the breeze push us across. If there was no breeze we did ok using
paddles, but not as good. If there was a heavy breeze we were smart enough
not to go out on the water with a canoe. LOL. We always figured if we had
netted some of those little red shiners we might have caught more fish, but
we would have caught smaller fish. We never tried it though.

Bob La Londe
www.YumaBassMan.com