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Crappies are not only fun to catch but they also make great eating, so these panfish tend to be quite popular with anglers on just about any lake in Pennsylvania where they are found. Foster Joseph Sayers Lake in Centre County is a well-known crappie hotspot here in our region and has been managed under the Panfish Enhancement Program for many years to help maintain the quality of the fishery there. Statewide the daily creel limit for crappies and other panfish is 50 with no size limit and a year-round season. On Sayers, the daily limit for crappies is 20 with a 9-inch minimum size limit. In order to improve the crappie fishery and enhance angler satisfaction, the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission (PFBC) is considering modifying those regulations.
“The lake is a popular crappie fishery with high angler use and harvest and it’s not reaching its full potential under the current regulations,” said Jason Detar, Chief of the PFBC Division of Fisheries Management. “Only about 8 percent of the crappies in our fishery surveys meet the legal size of 9 inches or longer. The majority of adult crappies collected during our fishery surveys are in the 7-inch to 8-inch range, and anglers want to harvest some of these fish.”
The proposed changes would lower the limit of crappies on Sayers to 10 fish per day, which could include five crappies under 9 inches and five crappies 9 inches or larger.
“The changes would allow anglers to still harvest some of the larger fish which are 9 inches or longer, as well as some of the smaller fish which are not currently available to harvest,” said Detar. “The goal is to increase the overall numbers of 9-inch and longer crappies by reducing some of the harvest of these fish, and by thinning the numbers of 7-inch and 8-inch fish through angler harvest.”
In order to inform anglers and measure public support for the proposed angling regulations for crappies at Sayers, the PFBC will hold a public meeting on Tuesday, February 23, at Bald Eagle State Park. The meeting will be held from 6:30 to 8 p.m. at the park’s Environmental Learning Center, located at 149 Main Park Road, Howard. All anglers interested in the future of crappie fishing at Sayers are invited to attend.
As the weather continues to improve, I’m hopeful a return to some trout fishing won’t be long now. With that in mind, I’ve been tying flies to replenish my own fly boxes and those of a few good friends who aren’t tiers themselves. Along with refilling all the proven standards like Pheasant Tails, Walt’s Worms, Parachute Adams, Elk-Hair Caddis, assorted soft-hackle wet flies and many others, I’ve also been tying up batches of some new variations that have proved their worth over the past couple of seasons. One of those is a simple little fly I call the White-Bead Zebra Midge.
Zebra Midges have been a staple in my fly boxes for a while. They are quick and easy to tie, and of course, they catch fish quite well. There are lots of variations of this pattern, but the basic Zebra Midge is simply a slender body of black tying thread ribbed with fine silver wire and a silver bead at the head. They are typically tied on curved-shank scud hooks in sizes from 14 down to 20. In theory, the Zebra Midge is supposed to represent the tiny midge larvae that are present in great numbers in just about any body of water, including trout streams.
Like most veteran fly tiers, I tend to tweak even many of the standard patterns I tie, and Zebra Midges are no exception. I like the bodies on virtually all my nymphs and other subsurface flies to be at least a little fuzzy rather than smooth, so I tie my “Zebes” with a strand of fine yarn rather than tying thread. Next, I tied them in other colors, especially red, dark brown and olive and used gold, red or black wire for the ribbing. I also tried black and red beads. With all those possible variations in play, I was eventually carrying a box full of different color combinations of Zebes, and most of them caught some fish.
But one of the most effective variations I found came after I tied up a batch of Zebes with white beads and a few turns of white ostrich herl next to the bead. In most respects, the white bead looks terribly unrealistic, but don’t tell that to the trout. There have been just too many days over the past two seasons that the White-Bead Zebra Midge has often outfished some other consistent producers.
If you will be attending the Jaffa Sports Show next weekend and would like to see some White-Bead Zebra Midges and some of my other favorite fly patterns, I will be doing fly-tying demonstrations at the Unkel Joe’s Woodshed booth on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Stop by for a little fishing talk too.