As part of their 2-day Florida State Tournament event on Harris Chain of Lakes, Crappie Masters held a media day to introduce local media to the art of crappie fishing. Tavares is a beautiful little town built right on the shore of Lake Dora.
The waterfront in Tavares includes an 88 slip marina and three seaplane slips. There is a fueling dock, a wide accessible boat ramp and nearby parking. Nearby restaurants offer outstanding food selections and accommodations range from motels to bed and breakfast facilities.
Each tournament team hosted one or two media members on their boat to experience real tournament crappie fishing. I was lucky enough to draw Jim and Barb Reedy of Team Vicious. Vicious is the official fishing line of the Crappie Masters tournaments. Jim and Barb prefer the High Vis Line in six pound test for their crappie fishing.
The rules were simple - boats out at 7:00 am and back in at 11:00. Instead of the normal 7 fish per team, one fish would be weighed in for each media participant.
By the end of the day every boat had caught fish. The heaviest fish of the day was caught by Vic Attardo, a visiting writer from Pennsylvania. Vic was fishing with Dan Dannenmueller a Crappie Masters angler from Alabama and publisher of Crappie Now, a new and popular online magazine. Vic’s fish weighed in slightly less than 2 pounds.
Most fish weighed in on media day were between 1 and two pounds. It was obvious from this showing that the competition would be close when the real thing occurred on Friday and Saturday.
The media event also serves as a pre-fishing day for the tournament anglers who are setting their strategies for the real thing the following day. Most boats fished spider rigs with as many as 8 rods set off the bow with minnow tipped jigs to catch the crappie. Jim and Barf fished identical 12 foot BnM Gold rods in their spider rig.
Jim and Barb “pushed,” me to several crappie hookups, the largest weighed in at 1.16 pounds at the “official” weigh in for media day.
Fish found during media day would likely be targeted again the following day when the tournament begins.
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