Naturesfinest

I thought the stream was closed for the winter catch and release season at the end of the park for about 2 miles. Is this true?

I guess it's caused from a recessive gene in the black crappie that gives them this marking. They call it a black nose crappie. Both keepers today had this mark but none of the others we caught did. Here's a link to the article I stumbled upon last night. http://wired2fish.scout.com/story/1495658-do-you-know-your-crappie

So we didn't get skunked today! We fished for about 5 hours and caught 9 with 2 keepers. Most were in between 9-10" long. When we stopped for gas there was a guy who told us a couple spots to check out where he could normally pull some out so we headed to the big dock he recommended and fished all around it. The do m was in 25-30 feet of water and the crappie see to bite best at around 15'. We tossed jigs into the slips and hung minnows off the side. I would say we caught a few more on the minnows until the bite just quit around 3:30-4. Hey at least we finally tracked down some of those few and far between fish. My dad did catch one with quite a cool characteristic.( the first one he had ever caught with a marking like this). Funny thing is I just read about this trait last night online so I was able to educate him a little bit on what he pulled out. Thanks again for everyone's input and tips.

Thanks everyone for your help. We're going to give it another go tomorrow and see if we can do any better with the tips everyone provided. Does it get any easier in the spring during the spawn? We'll try beaver next if our luck doesn't change on the rock.

So my dad and I have been out to the rock about four times in the past 2 weeks hunting down brush piles in 20-30 feet of water trying to catch these mythical table rock crappie in the James river arm. So far we have caught 1 crappie(about 5" long), 1 walleye, and a ton of bass. We have been using minnows and an assortment of jigs. The problem were running into is that most of the corps brush piles we find are sticking out of the water or only about 10 feet deep because the lake is low. So now we are kind of scratching our heads and losing confidence quick. My dad has always been a big crappie fisherman and normally can find them on most lakes just not table rock. What in the world are we doing wrong?!? We use our electronics to find brush on the bottom but are still having no luck so I guess I need your help. Are we not fishing the right part of the lake? Not using the right baits? Not holding our mouth right? You get the point. Table rock is closest to us so we would love to learn how to find the crappie in it so we can freaking eat some fish? Oh yea and any tips for pulling out some more walleye would be great to! Catching bass is fun but were hungry for some fresh fish. We are going back out tomorrow to continue our search. Thanks in advance for any help on this matter.