Traveling to top-flight waters for giant crappies can be a vivid, rewarding experience.īesides, the slabs back home in Minnesota keep getting harder to find. But we can't look up from a 2-pound handful of crappie to see stands of cactus stretching toward the sky. Minnesota folks think they have some of the world's best crappie fishing, too. 'Same thing you are,' laughed Terry Kubik, our guide to the world-class crappies of Arizona. Down below, parked on the floodplain, a fleet of trucks rested in the shadows of high desert walls, with license plates reading Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina, and, yes, even Texas.Ĭould this be the Mecca - the sacred gathering place where crappie fishermen come to whale - as in whale on numbers of slabs? How could this be? Guides and fishermen from each of those states swear the greatest crappie fishing in the world is right out their back door. The desert mountain road led through a river and along a high pass overlooking Lake Roosevelt.

Sunlight peaking over the mountains painted the arroyos every shade of ocher and peach beneath a deep purple sky.

Fishing planet black crappie challenge