Outdoors - By: Anthony Cambpell   Best crappie season in years nears an end I The crappie fishing on Guntersville Lake last winter and this spring is said to have been the best in years. The dogwoods are in bloom and the fish are about to spawn and that signals an end to the season for most anglers. Neal Johnson of Pine Island has fished for crappie all winter and spring and seen lots of others fishing for them too. He said he can’t believe the sheer number of fish he’s seen pulled from the river this year. He figures it will all be over in a week or 2. “It’s like I told my fishing buddy Lynn Jarmon,“ Neal said. “I sure am going to miss that little tap on the end of my line. I’ve been fishing almost every day all winter long and I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself now.“ Neal has tried to use the fish he catches as quickly as possible. He said the sooner you eat them, the better they are. He’s fed big church groups 3 different times. The traditional way of fixing fish Ñ frying them Ñ also negates the health benefits, so he’s even been coming up with alternative ways to cook them. “Wild fish from an unpolluted waterway is some of the best meat you can eat healthwise,“ he said. An Alaskan fishing guide once showed Neal how to make fish stew out of whatever you have on hand in the kitchen. “I’ve been making a fish stew about every week during crappie season,“ Neal said. Lots of people like to fish with minnows, but Neal is a jig man. Chartreuse is his go-to color. He fishes with a 1/32 oz. jig head lots of times, but also uses a 1/16 when there’s a lot of current. One of his favorite tricks is to fish 2 jigs at once, with one tied above the other on the line. “It helps you get down when they’re pulling a lot of water,“ he said. He does a lot of his fishing from the bank, but also goes out in a boat sometimes. Ask different crappie anglers when is the best time to fish and you’ll get different answers. Some swear by night fishing, but Neal is a daytime angler. He likes to get out about daylight most mornings. Some people work their jigs vertically. Neal likes to slowly retrieve his jig. “It’s a distinctive tap when they bite,“ he said. “It’s not aggressive like a bass, but it is distinctive.“ The limit on crappie is 30 a day and Neal has had some of those days. He had one not too long ago where he and Lynn had to throw fish back. “We quit counting how many we caught,“ he said. “The fish were still biting when we quit. We didn’t keep quite 60. I had 24 in my bucket and he had 28. We caught those in an hour and a half.“ He said they’ve had several days when they caught 50-plus together. “We’re not the only people who have been doing this, so there’s no telling how many crappie have been pulled out of this lake this year,“ he said. He said he’s always heard that crappie are about to spawn when dogwoods are in bloom and the oak leaves are big as a dime. After spawning, he said they’ll retreat to deep water and become very difficult to find. A lot of wildlife goes in cycles, Neal said, noting a so-called 7-year cycle on game birds like grouse. “I’ve heard crappie are cyclical too,“ he said. “I’ve also heard that certain water conditions are needed to produce an exceptional spawn of crappie. Whatever happened 3 or 4 years ago must have been just right, because we’ve really had the crappie this year.“