Editor’s Note: I’d worked out my work schedule, so I could take off on a Tuesday in late May to go fishing with my buddy, fishing guide and tournament winning crappier, Jonathan Phillips of Wetumpka, Alabama. Phillips had just won the Alabama Crappie Masters Championship tournament and was catching plenty of big crappie. He felt confident we could have a good day on the waters of the Alabama River, about 1-1/2-hours from my home. However, when I called him on Monday night, Phillips said, “We’ve had 7-1/2-inches of rain in the last 24 hours on the Alabama River. Since you live just outside of Birmingham, you know the entire state’s waters, including numbers of feeder creeks, are flooded and out of their banks. I know this much water will move the crappie around from where they were during the Crappie tournament. Also, a lot of trash will be in the river. I think finding crappie will be harder, and there’s an 80 percent chance of rain on Tuesday. We can go if you want to, but I really think we can pick a better day to fish. I’ve developed some summer patterns that have been really working well. If we wait a week or two, I feel certain we can catch some good-sized crappie.” 

Even before I called Phillips that day, I knew what to expect. Birmingham had trees down and power outages for about 3 days before our Tuesday fishing trip. With an 80-percent chance of rain, I really didn’t hold out much hope for our Tuesday crappie-fishing trip. So, on Tuesday morning, I got up and started writing. Then I received a text from Phillips about 11:00 am that read, “The weather is clearing up down here now. So, I plan to go to Lake Jordan (which is closer to Birmingham than the Alabama River and is on the Coosa River) to fish. I’ve talked to some of my friends on Lake Jordan. Because of the locks and dams on the Coosa River chain, it’s not nearly as muddy as the Alabama River. So, I’m going to go over there to just see what I can catch.”

I thought about what Phillips’ text said for about a minute. Then I texted Phillips back and told him, “If you’re going, I’m going. Tell me where to meet you, and I’ll be there sometime between 12:30 and 1:00 pm.” Phillips texted me back and told me where to meet him. He mentioned that before he’d texted me, he’d called a friend, Anthony Milner, and asked him to go with him. He asked, “Will it be a problem for you if we have one more person in the boat?” I assured him that I’d be glad to have another angler in the boat, because I hoped to catch enough crappie to feed my family and friends at a fish fry on Memorial Day, 2017.

To learn much more about crappie fishing, get John E. Phillips’ Kindle eBooks, and print and Audible books by going to https://johninthewild.com/books/#crappie or to www.barnesandnoble.com for Nook books. To receive and download for free “The Crappie Catchers’ Cookbook,” by John and Denise Phillips, go to https://johninthewild.com/free-books.

To fish with Jonathan Phillips and learn how he catches big crappie all summer long, contact him at 334-391-9735, or go to his Facebook page at Team  Phillips Guide Service https://www.facebook.com/Team-Phillips-Guide-Service-935028296557829.

Tomorrow: Solving Flood Water Crappie Problems with Jonathan Phillips