If you enjoy water-based outdoor recreation, Tongue River Reservoir is a great place to be during the month of June. It offers almost endless possibilities.

Fishermen flock there for the crappie action at this time of year. The reservoir has both black crappies and white crappies and, hands down, offers the best crappie fishing to be found in the state of Montana.

The good crappie bite generally begins on about the Memorial Day weekend as the fish move into the shallows to look for spawning areas at the reservoir at Decker in southern Big Horn County. The good fishing generally stretches through the Fourth of July weekend before the crappies start heading deep to find cooler waters and the bite becomes more inconsistent.

But now, because the crappies are in shallows, they're not just available to boat anglers. Campers at Tongue River State Park can also get in on the action, pitching little jigs from shore, letting them sink, then crawling them back in along the bottom. At times, the shore fishing actually outshines the boat fishing.

Using spinning rods, reels and light lines, the trick is to tell the difference between the gentle bite of a crappie and the bumps from rocks and other bottom features as the jigs come in. Crappies are notoriously light biters. Rather than smacking a bait, they just open their mouth and hang on. So if you feel a bump of any kind or just a light pressure on the line, lift your rod and you just might find that bump is a fish on your hook.

During really hot action, it's possible to catch the reservoir limit of 30 crappies a day with relative ease.

In addition to small jigs with twister tails or tube bodies, small minnows are also effective on crappies, either fished alone or hooked on a jig head.

Boat anglers have more options available to them when it comes to fishing this water.

Tongue River Reservoir is home to a wide array of fish species including walleyes, northern pike, smallmouth bass, perch, green sunfish, sauger and bullheads among others. Each has their favorite type of habitat around the lake.

On a recent day there, my son Matt and I found that the winds were really too strong to fish small crappie jigs effectively. So we opted to simply troll slowly along the shoreline with small Shad Raps.

It wound up being an effective fishing method for a variety of fish. We caught walleyes, smallmouth bass, green sunfish, crappies and even a bullhead. We caught no northern pike, but then again, our lures were pretty small to interest a nice pike.

Five of the 10 walleyes we caught ranged from a pound to a pound-and-a-half and were filleted that evening at the state park's fish cleaning station to be taken home for dinner. The rest of the fish, including perhaps 30 crappies, were released.

Crappie action is often best early in the morning and again in the evening. We weren't on hand for the morning action, but at about 6 p.m., the evening crappie bite turned on strong and it stayed that way until sundown when we called it a day.

We hooked singles and doubles as the fish seemed to come up from the depths everywhere we went to hit our shallow-running Shad Raps.

Camping at Tongue River State Park is far different than it was in the old days when all you had was dirt trails and a few picnic benches.

The state park now has a nice marina with bait, groceries and beverages, gravel camping pads, electricity for RVs at Campers Point, non-electricity sites elsewhere, double boat ramp with dock, a big boat trailer parking area, RV dump station and the fish cleaning station.

Campsites are still near the water and stretched along the shoreline so kids can swim, splash, fish or simply toss stones in the water. Travel off the roads is restricted which also limits the available camp spots from the old free-for-all days when you could always find some place to tuck in. Fees are $20 per night for camping spots with electricity and $15 for those without.

In addition to fishing and camping, the reservoir is a destination spot for personal watercraft users, water skiers and other pleasure boaters, though anyone on the water should be aware of the no-wake zones that are posted near the campgrounds and at the cabin area on the north end of the reservoir.

Put it all together and you have a great place to go in the month of June with water-based outdoor fun for just about everyone.