Showing Reelfoot Lake: How to Fish for Crappie, Bass, Bluegills and Catfish and Hunt for Ducks by John E. Phillips

How do you find and catch crappie each day of the month and every month of the year? The simple answer is to learn from someone who makes his living finding and catching crappie every day, each month and every year. Because Reelfoot Lake in northwest Tennessee is one of the premier crappie lakes in the nation, Blue Bank Resort’s crappie guides must produce limits of crappie for their customers all year. In this book, you’ll learn how to fish from the best crappie fishermen in the world. Also in the book are videos from pro fishermen, including Ronnie Capps, who along with his partner Steve Coleman, have won more than $1 million in crappie tournaments. He’ll give you some of his best strategies for finding big crappie at any time of the year.

Reelfoot Lake is not only a crappie lake. Monster-sized bass are caught there all year long. Once again, to be successful, you need to know where the bass are holding at different times of the year, and the lures and tactics that catch them. The men featured in this book guide bass fishermen all year, and on their off-days, they go bass fishing themselves. Catching 15-20 bass or more in a half-day of fishing isn’t difficult, and 4- to 6-pound largemouths are caught every day at Reelfoot.

In the fall and winter, Reelfoot Lake is “Duck Central” during waterfowl season. Located only a mile from the Mississippi River are three-different waterfowl refuges on Reelfoot Lake. The ducks travel down the flyway and back and forth between the refuges. Seasoned-veteran duck guides like Billy Blakely and Jackie Wayne Van Cleave study the ducks’ flight patterns and move their hunters where the most ducks are flying on any given day. Too, when hunters limit-out, they can crappie fish the rest of the day.

During the late spring and summer, anglers come from all over the nation for the outstanding bluegill and catfishing. Because Reelfoot is a shallow-water lake with plenty of submerged logs, cypress trees, old creek channels and a vast number of lily pads and grass fields, you quickly can limit-out on bluegills, if you know where the fish bed and how to catch them. This book gives you that information, so you can take a cooler-full of bluegills home with you after a few days at Blue Bank Resort.

You can’t beat Reelfoot for catching catfish. In one afternoon or night of Yo-Yo and/or rod-and-reel fishing for catfish, you easily can take 100 to 150 pounds of hard-fighting, delicious-tasting catfish. The good news about catfishing at Reelfoot is you can put-out Yo-Yos (Mechanical Fishermen), and they’ll be catching catfish, while you’re fishing for crappie, bass or bluegills.

Reelfoot Lake is a sportsman’s paradise, and the fishing tips and hunting strategies in this e-book can be used most anywhere in the country to catch more and bigger crappie, bass, bluegills and catfish and take more ducks.


"Very helpful, especially for someone new going on a trip there." -Henry Chmiel