Eric Rachel’s success in the woods has brought him a fair amount of fame and notoriety.
You don’t have to be a genius to figure out when the crappie are biting in the channel at Lake D’Arbonne in Farmerville. Drive across any of the bridges that cross the lake, and you’ll see boats lined up as far as the eye can see. If that’s the case when you cross, hook up your boat when you get home and get in on the action.
And anybody who knows anything about crappie fishing in North Louisiana knows where to find Bobby Phillips when the fish are biting. This one-time owner of The Honey Hole tackle shop in West Monroe sold his business so he could spend more time on the lake. He still works there, but only three days a week. You don’t get to be a crappie guru by working all the time.
I met Phillips at the Stowe Creek Bridge this past Saturday. I heard him calling me before I could see him because the fog was so thick. We had originally planned on fishing the main channel near the Highway 33 bridges, but the fog kept us close to Stowe Creek for a couple hours.
“I’ve already caught five good ones,” Phillips said from the misty gray air. “Get in, and we’ll see if we can catch some more here while we wait on the wind to blow the fog out.”
Phillips lifted the lid of his cooler as I stepped into his boat. Five fat crappie surrounded a bag of ice. He handed me two rods -– one for each hand. The rod in my right hand had a blue/white hair jig, and the rod in my left was rigged with a blue/white tube jig. Each was adorned with a silver-sparkle Berkley Crappie Nibble.
“Pull enough line out of the reel so that the jig is about a foot above the reel,” Phillips instructed. “It’s about 11 or 12 feet in the channel here by the bridge, and I’ve caught these at 10 feet. These poles are 11 feet long, so that will put you right at 10 feet.”
Phillips must have handed me the magic poles because I began steadily adding slabs to those already in the box while he wondered what he was doing wrong.
“Same poles, same baits, same Nibbles … must be beginners luck,” he chided.
It didn’t take Phillips long to get back in his groove, though. You might say it’s as difficult for Phillips to not catch crappie as it is for Dale Earnhardt Jr. to not turn left. The fog eventually lifted, and we headed out to the main channel to join the crowds.
“We need a rear-view mirror out here just to stay out of trouble,” Phillips joked as we set out blue/white tubes and hair jigs at 17 feet. “Folks out here yesterday morning had their limits by lunch. Let’s see if we can do the same.”
Our bending rods just couldn’t combat the blowing wind, though, so we made our way back to the Stowe Creek Bridge to find some relief. Phillips clicked off several more fish on his counter before deciding he was ready to call it a day.
“They’ll be like this all winter,” he told me as I helped him ready his boat. “Let me know when you want to come back. Let’s try to pick a day that’s not so windy. It’s not that the fish don’t bite. It just gets hard to deal with it out on the open channel.”
