Ocho with my bass

"The bass fisherman doesn't just go out and throw a worm, and if he catches nothing he goes home," Huckabee says. "He's got all these different baits that cover all these different depths and there are all these different techniques."

Huckabee wants to challenge fishermen to rethink the ways they pursue crappie, an especially tasty game fish...

"Crappies' metabolism never really stops," he says. "They feed the same in the winter as they do in the summer, and they're just constantly feeding."

If I had one thing to do different in regards to the homestead, I think it would be that I would stock the pond only with crappie. Not that I don't like bass (that's my hand above) but crappie are much more fun and taste so much better, and bass just love to fill your pond with little bass and stunt the growth of all.

So I've decided on a new fish management policy. Big bass and big crappies go in the freezer. Little crappies go back in the pond. Little bass go to the chickens, who need the protein.

And yes, I have discovered that the way to catch the biggest crappies is by using crankbaits, or if I do use jigs to add a spinner to my helluva jig; by making the bait big enough you can leave most of the little crappies alone anyway...