Living the Dream – Big Bass Crappie Dreams

Introduction: Two weeks ago I had the opportunity to join Oliver Ngy, renowned trophy bass hunter and founder of the lifestyle label Big Bass Dreams, for a day of fishing at one of my favorite regional bodies of water, Lake Berryessa in nearby Napa County. Looking to mix things up our target for the day was not the usual largemouth and smallmouth bass that I typically fish for, but rather the pursuit of monster crappie. Enter the Big Crappie Dreams movement.

I joined Oliver Ngy, founder of Big Bass Dreams for a day on the water

Big Bass Dreams: Before I delve into our epic crappie day let’s take a step back and talk about Oliver, his love for monster bass and his popular lifestyle label Big Bass Dreams. Oliver is well known as a big bass hunter, a guide, and star of multiple fishing videos. It is crazy to think that now in his mid-30’s that he is considered an “O.G.” when it comes to the big swimbait game.

Oliver is on the Megabass Field Staff and uses the company's entire lineup of lures, especially their swimbaits

One of Oliver's greatest moments in this pursuit was an on film catch of a 17.40 pound largemouth bass, which truly is the stuff of bassin dreams. Oliver took this hunger for pursuing monster bass to create multiple DVDs and the creation of the Big Bass Dreams fishing lifestyle company, and in the process has been able to share his fishing passion with anglers all over the world.

With the rise of online video content Oliver just finished wrapping up his first season of a new reality TV show titled, “Breaking Bass.” In addition to guiding one of Oliver’s most popular services is on the water big bass training sessions for anglers that want a crash course in pursuing the fish of their dreams.

A look at the lineup of swimbaits on Oliver's deck

Oliver’s love of swimbaits, especially Megabass ones, is well known but he’s not just about tossing big baits for largemouth, and actually has a surprisingly diverse background when it comes to fishing.

In addition to Megabass baits Oliver also utilizes Defiant swimbaits in his pursuit of giants

For example he grew up as a deck hand on a tuna boat, competed in tournaments for over a decade and has been committed to fishing for multiple species his entire life, through which he has experienced a wide gamut of fishing opportunities which has helped him refine his game today.

Oliver shows us a smaller Defiant prototype in the final stages of development

The Dream Machine: Though I’ve known Oliver for over a decade it is hard to believe that it was only now that our schedules aligned and we finally had the opportunity to hit the water together on his Northern California swing. When we locked in the day I was sure that what I was signing up for was a full day of slinging big baits in the hope of those few, but valuable, strikes in the pursuit of double digit bass. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

We started the day ripping up a bunch of largemouth and smallmouth on Megabass Vision 110 jerkbaits

Our target for the day was not the big mouthed sunfish that I usually spend my days targeting but rather crappie. Those following Oliver’s recent fishing adventures on social media had no doubt started to wonder just what had gotten into Oliver as there was post after post highlighting his recent crappie catches and describing his Big Crappie Dreams movement with statements like “this has been my DREAM all along to showcase the real star of the North American Sunfish species (of which all black bass are inferior members of). Thanks for your support, look out for custom #BCD (Big Crappie Dreams) merch like floating fish baskets and stringers made out of kevlar and titanium soon. Have a nice weekend you Slab chasers,” and “You Guys can have those silly bass… I’ll be at the craps table!”

I assumed a day out on the water with Oliver meant launching swimbaits all day

Had the madness that is trophy bass hunting finally got to Oliver?! No more than ten minutes into the day I found out that Oliver was dead serious on catching some big crappie when we pulled up on a shallow flat rather than pull out his big bait launcher he tied on a Megabass Vision 110 and proceeded to rip away for crappies. I went with it and pulled out my own ripbait and it didn’t take long for us to start getting into the fish. The only problem was we were not catching the “right kind.”

Oliver had something different in mind and his mind was on the crappie. After shrugging in disappointment with this "by-catch" it was time to get serious about finding those crappie

As Oliver and I started landing fish we found that we were landing smallies, to which Oliver exclaimed “by-catch!” It was pretty obvious he was dead serious on catching those crappies and for the next twenty minutes we crossed the entire lake to find “better” conditions for those elusive slabs.
 

Oliver says good by to the smallie water and we cross the entire lake to find the crappies

He also proceeded to show me his aggressive ripping technique in which he utilizes braid for the mainline topped with a fluorocarbon or mono shock leader. This is different than how I generally fish ripbaits for largemouth, but as I quickly learned today was not about bass fishing.

In addition to Vision 110  jerkbaits we turned to the Megabass Hazedong Shad as our primary crappie arsenal