I always liked the "learned on the fly" tips.

It was July 4, 1985 and I was fishing on the North Fork of the Lewis River. For whatever reason, raw crawdad tails were the hot ticket. You had to beat the fish away from your hook if you had a crawdad tail on it! Eggs, prawns, and sandshrimp were just not working.

Anyways, the local store(s) ran out of crawdads by the end of the 4th. You couldn't find a crawdad in a 25 mile radias of the North Fork. Needless to say, fishing suddenly died off.

The 5th rolled around with no crawdads again. As I was standing there not catching fish, I noticed that people were only using the crawdad tails and had thrown the crawdad bodies all over the place. So, being the bright teen-ager that I was, I collected a few day-old crawdad claws, ripped open the tiny shells, and proceeded to bait my hook with these tiny bits of meat.

Two casts later, I had my two chrome summer runs and was on my way home

The look on the other bankies faces was priceless! I never did tell anyone what I did to catch those fish. From what I heard later, not a single fish was caught that day at that location.

OBJigs: Was fishin' for crappie at the mouth of the Walla Walla a few years back (like 15 or so). Was using my trout gear with a crappie jig n' float. Remember the scene in the Movie Jaws where Jaws was towing around the buoys like they were not even there and Roy made the comment of "Think we needa bigger boat." That was the day I realized that steelhead do indeed like jigs. "Think I need a bigger fishing pole..."came out of my mouth as a 10+ lb. steelhead slammed my crappie jig on 2 lb. test line and kept on going up rver.....

Parker