Photo by Ron Sinfelt

The tip of the 12-foot jigging pole gave a quick twitch and then bowed against the pull of a fish deep down in Lake Chotard. But the excitement of the first fish of the day was tempered by the realization that I had over twice as much line out as I had pole, and that there was no reel. And it was 35 degrees, and the wind was blowing. And my fingers were encased in thick Gore-Tex gloves.

And I had no clue as to what I was going to do!

“Hey, bubba,” came my partner’s voice from the back of the boat, “you’re on your own. Whatever you’re going to do, you need to do it before that fish gets away.”

I put the pole in my left hand, stuck the fingertips of my index and middle finger of my right hand in my mouth and pulled the glove off with my teeth. Then I started pulling line through the eyes of the rod, letting it curl on the front deck of the boat.

When I had less than 10 feet out, I lifted the fish over the gunwale and dropped it in the middle of the boat. It landed with a thud -- a loud one, the kind of sound that a 2-pound slab-sided crappie makes when it strikes aluminum.

“Good fish,” said my partner, who was still holding two poles in his gloved hands. “Now, tell me how cold the water is when you pick him up.”

It was cold -- not that I minded. The idea was to get in on what had been reported to be a great crappie bite on the oxbow lake north of Vicksburg last winter. It was cold, but the action was hot -- and the spring and summer supply of crappie filets had long been gone from my freezer.

“Hey!” I fired back at him. “What would be worse?” Getting your hands cold from touching fish, or sitting out here all day freezing and not catching fish? I’ll take catching fish any day over the other.”

Besides, it wasn’t the handling of the fish that chilled the fingers-- what hurt was having to rebait the jig with a minnow. That can’t be done with gloves.

But fortunately, it was something we got used to in a hurry on that day last January. Once we found a big school of crappie at Chotard, we started catching the fish steadily, needing only three hours to fill our 48-quart ice chest (which needed no ice) and our no-longer-needed drink box. We headed for the warmth of the truck and the drive back to Jackson with 60 big fat crappie boasting an average weight of about 1 1/2 pounds each. And as the more liberal Louisiana creel limit applies to this old oxbow, which is considered a water “adjoining” the Bayou State, that catch could have been 100. Our limit was based solely on the number of fish that we felt we wanted to clean and on the level of comfort that we figured Chevrolet-produced blowing heat would bring.

Sound too good to be true? Maybe so -- but it definitely is true, and fairly represents the kind of action on offer at many Mississippi waters.