1-30-14 "crappie" Fishing Report

[Ham]

I met CajunAngler today at the ramp just above Scotty's Doxk. We fished banker's hours. I had hopes we'd be able to find those crappie we've all been reading about.

The weather was as forecast. The wind was persistently annoying. It affected boat control, made strike detection more difficult, and made a warmish day seem chilly.

We had generation when we first got there. We got trout bites almost immediately and fairly often. They ate Zig Jigs, but it's a different deal in 15 foot of water. Lol. I have a lot to learn about trout jig fishing on Taney.

We caught fish on a little bit of everything. Zig Jigs, Bobby Garland Baby Shads. Swimming Minnows, finesse crankbaits, and a little Shad Rap.

We caught them down to Roark and then motored down around the corner somewhere around some small islands. We only caught a few trout down there but they were nice.

We found a little pocket of largemouth bass on the break from 12-18 foot.

Our trout bite died when the water that had been generated drained out. It went from a persistent bite to a almost non existent bitte.

However, after trying all day to catch a crappie, we started picking up a few small crappie. Our crappie bite got much better late in the day when the current stopped. They were very small, but they were crappie and I was glad to catch them.

We caught 60 fish between us. We had 6 bass, 10 crappie, 8 or so Brown trout, and the rest were Rainbows. Some of the Rainbows seemed to be very small, but a lot of them were pretty decent.

All the Brown trout were between 12-15 inches. They just flat pull better than Rainbows.

All in all I was very Happy with the day. I was concerned that the wind would really get in our way worst than it did. I was happy we got bites and certainly Happy with us catching 60. I really was focused on catching crappie and went thru a lot of lures trying to do that rather than focusing on catching trout. I expected to catch a few trout, but we stayed below the 65 bridge all day and I did not expect to catch that many. I expected that we might catch a bass or two. I was happy we caught 6 in a pretty defined area.

Finally catching a few crappie was a nice end to the day. Gosh they were small though. We didn't have one that was even 8 inches long. I'm not discouraged by that though. We'll catch em better next time.

[hknfsh]

Sounds like a good day Ham. Nothing wrong with a multi-species fishing trip with those kind of numbers....good job ! Was coming down this weekend but weather doesn't look to good right now.

[Ham]

I really did try my best to stay focused on the crappie and tried a lot of my different crappie stuff fishing higher in the water column. I think I could have caught more trout if I was trout fishing,

The crappie we caught were right down on bottom and biting very light.

IF we were trout fishing, I would have switched over to a micro jig under a float later in the day when the current died down.