The following is a story of back luck, poor planning, and not being prepared (all on me)...
The Plan and drivingThe plan was to get 5-6 hours of night fishing at Lake Pleasant with Preston and my buddy Elio. We were going to be launched and heading up the river by 7:00, but that was all derailled when a truck pulled up next to me at Carefree Hwy and Lake Pleasant Pkwy to inform me that one of my trailer tires was "flat". I pulled off at New River Rd, and "flat" was most definitely and understatement. The tire was gone and I was driving on the rim
The Tire EventsWe thought "great, there goes getting in a full hour of scouting and trolling before the sun goes down". We started working on getting the spare off and breaking the nuts on the blown tire. We quickly realized that I didn't have a socket set to take the spare off, and my truck's tire iron didn't fit the boat nuts. Using some old vice grips, Elio and Preston spent 45 minutes trying to take the spare off the trailer because the nut was rusted on the J bolt and wouldn't budge. Eventually the bolt snapped and we were able to take the tire off... only to find out it had a dime sized hole because it had been rubbing against the trailer mount for years.
Preston's car had 5 lugs so we thought we could use his spare to get us to the lake. That didn't happen because the grease bearing on my trailer was too big and wouldn't let us mount it (probably for the better).
Since we were only 10-15 minutes from North Peoria, Preston went and checked Walmart, Home Depot, and Lowes for any spares on the shelves and they didn't have any.
Finally, I called my wife and after 20 minutes of explaining where she could find my emergency spare tire and the portable air compressor, she was on her way up to us. We got the emergency spare tire mounted and it was sitting at a comfortable 16 PSI. Tried to pump it with my portable air compressor and it was dead. I didn't have an extension cord, so I couldn't even connect it to my truck to give it power (AGH!!!!)
At this point, it had been about 2.5 hours and it was just before 9:00, so we thought LET'S GET ON THE WATER! After a brief drive to the lake, we finally launched at 9:30 and headed up to the Agua Fria.
The Fishing!I graphed several trees I had marked looking for schools, we finally settled on an area that had some structure and was right next to a 10 foot drop off. I caught the first crappie just before 11:00. I was about 3-4 cranks off the bottom and caught it on a minnow and Aberdeen. Preston followed that up with another one 30 minutes later on the same rig. After that, we had a steady night of hits and catches. We finally packed up just before 3:00 AM and headed back home.
We ended up keeping 11 crappie, but easily threw back a dozen or so. Preston even caught two white bass that he threw back. Everything was caught with a dropshot rig using a minnow on an Aberdeen. We fished 28-32 FOW and caught them in so many depths. A few cranks off the bottom seemed to produce the most catches though. Everything was pretty small with most being in the 8-10 inch range.
They weren't hitting it in the traditional way. You really had to pay attention to the weight of your line. It seemed like they were putting the minnow in their mouth and swimming up. If we noticed the weight got lighter we had to slowly lift and set the hook.
