Sam

Chris, troutgnat, CrappieMagnet - Now you guys are getting down to the nitty and the gritty - GOOD information here! Yes, I'm sure the sickle hooks are great, but they look like a hard black steel hook. I pour and tie crappie jigs on the gold Eagle Claw jig hooks (I think those are the 575 series) because they have a wide gap and for another reason, too. I've taken to using super-braid lines for my crappie fishing, and they'll straighten those hooks out before the line breaks. Then it's easy to bend the hook back into shape, and I have whole trips sometimes fishing brushpiles without a breakoff. I used FireLine for a few years, and for the last two years I've used 10 lb. PowerPro, which is the diameter of 3 lb. mono. I don't know what the actual breaking strength is, but I know when I get hung up I can drag my boat backwards against the wind with it. It gets those gold hooks UNHUNG. So far as tail material for tying crappie jigs, I've got another trick. Get a ball of white "Nylon Mason's Twine" from the hardware department at Lowe's. I cut two pieces of that about 5" long then put them side-by-side and fold them in half. I tie those to the head of the hook with the four single ends reaching beyond the tail of the hook. Then cut those ends to length with scissors and frizz out the twine with a comb. The frizzed-out twine has a real live action in the water, like maribou, but being nylon it holds up a lot better. It takes all colors of lure dye real well, and you can make endless good color combinations by dying one string and leaving the other one white before you tie the jig, or by just dipping the tip of the tail in dye. Unlike maribou, the cost of that nylon twine per jig is just about zero.

That's a real good looking crappie jig. I didn't know about sickle hooks, but I like the way it leaves a good gap between the point of the hook and the lure body. That'll work! My gripe is with lure manufacturers who tie small crappie jigs on little tiny standard hooks, leaving 1/4 inch or less between the hook point and the lure body or jighead. That's just ridiculous for a fish that sucks in a lure with a mouth that opens to a good 2" across. What kind of hookset could you expect with such a rig, other than just hooking the thin inside lining of the mouth? But yeah, that sickle hook would do the job. --------------------------- Hey, just a "war story", but I learned a whole lot about how crappie bite on a trip a long time ago, and it's good info I've been able to use ever since. This is why I feel the way I do about big hooks, or at least hooks with a good gap between the point and lure body. On a lake in CA, I once got into a perfect situation for "sight fishing" for crappie. The water was dead calm and clear, there was a hump out in the middle where it was only about 12 feet deep, and the bottom was covered thick with 2' tall green water weeds. The sun was shining, and I could see every leaf on those weeds. No fish were visible, but 12"-13" crappie were down in those weeds and they were biting. I was casting a white 1/16 oz. doll fly, and since I could see, it was easy to move it right over the tops of the weeds. I'd be watching my lure, and suddenly there'd be a crappie following it, a few inches behind and below the lure. When the crappie made up its mind, it'd ease up and forward, distend that big mouth, and gently suck in the lure along with a whole bunch of water. Once in awhile the crappie would spit the lure and water right back out, and since I hadn't felt anything yet at that point, if I hadn't been able to see I wouldn't have known I'd had a bite. Mostly though, once the crappie had the lure it'd close its mouth, expel the water through its gills, and gently turn to its right and down. THEN is when I would have first felt a bite if I hadn't been able to see. Of course I tore 'em up that day because I could set the hook based on what I saw rather than what I felt. That made it real easy, but I would have caught a limit anyway. I thought it odd that every doggone one of them turned to the RIGHT after biting - I guess crappie are right handed. I think that holds true everywhere because since then I've noticed that most of the crappie I catch are hooked in the left side of the mouth. It looked to me like they were taking in an amount of water equal to maybe 10 times the volume of that lure when they bit, and that's why I think large or wide-gapped hooks are called for in crappie fishing, and there's no point at all in using tiny hooks.

I've got no problem in downsizing the WEIGHT of a crappie jig - in fact I love to fly fish for crappie with no weight at all when conditions are right. Weight just has to do with how deep you need to fish, how far you need to cast, and how hard the wind's blowing. Also, using a smaller SIZE jig is right in some places. Over in TN I've caught slab crappies on little 3/4" Assassin jigs, and the big crappie jigs I use here wouldn't get a bite. Here on Tablerock, Bull Shoals, Stockton, and Pomme de Terre though, I can't get a crappie to bite on a lure that small. Maybe some guys do, but it's never worked for me even once. It gripes me though, how lure manufacturers, when they downsize the weight of a crappie jig, also downsize the HOOK SIZE. That ain't right - and there's more crappie lost beside the boat because of little-bitty hooks and a poor hookset than anything else. Tiny hooks are good for bluegills, not for crappie. When a crappie unhinges its mouth to bite, it's got a mouth almost as big as a bass of the same size. Big hooks work best, even on small crappie. I pour my own jig heads every winter, and for the 1/4, 1/8, and 1/16 oz. sizes I use a #1/0 gold jig hook. For 1/32 and 1/64 oz. I go down to a #1 hook, but no smaller than that. I seldom get a poor hookset in the lining of the mouth, and I don't think I miss any bites because my hook is too big.

Yep, I agree - and the information you shared is worth a lot more than that.

CrappieMagnet, that's good advice in general but in my opinion it's a little different here. For one thing, our lakes don't have weeds or weedlines. The other thing is that our baitfish run very big, and downsizing to tiny lures just doesn't work here as it does in many other places. I don't think I've ever caught a crappie here on a lure less than 1 1/2" long, and I actually found a 6 1/2" shad in a big crappie's stomach a couple of years ago. What we have to remember here is that if you think a lure is too big for a crappie, it probably isn't. I agree with others that crappie in Tablerock don't seem to bunch up as tight in brushpiles and cover as they do at Bull Shoals. Tablerock crappie will be scattered along an area they like and also concentrate in small bunches related to brush and stick-ups within that general area. Lots of times the ones not in brush show up well on a scope - if you're going along a bank or a point in, say, 25-35 feet of water and see scattered fish all along that area suspended at about 16 feet, that's probably crappie. It's important to remember that crappie like to come up for a lure or bait, but they'll never go down for it. It's real easy to fish below them and never get a bite. It's best to present a lure or bait just a foot or two above where the fish are. My favorite method to cover water and get crappie located is to scope for them in places where I've found them before. If I see fish on the scope that I think are crappie, then I'll slow-troll that whole bank for them with a 1/8 or 1/16 oz. jighead and a 2" swimming minnow, keeping an eye on the scope and staying in the depth where suspended fish are. I use the trolling motor to go as slow as I can and still keep the tail of the lure wiggling, and sometimes just drifting with the wind is enough for that. Within that area if I get bit when I pass a flooded tree or some brush, then I'll stop and cast to it because crappies may be bunched up there. If I'm casting, I'll downsize to a rig with no more than a 1/16 oz. jighead and a small crappie tube (gitzit), because I can move that slower and also jig up-and-down with it. Preferred colors change with different days. Most often, pearl or light blue colors work best and sometimes I'll dye the tail of the lure chartruese.

I have Daiwa Exceler spinning reels in three different sizes, and I like them a lot. Those are only $70 reels, so if the higher-priced Daiwa reels are even better than these they must really be good. I also use a Pfleuger President-series spinning reel in the same price range, and I like it too. Maybe I'm inclined to like it because I've been fishing with Pfleuger products, off and on, for 50 years or so. Or, maybe the Pfleuger name just makes me think of Sven and Ole.

That's for sure! Around 2005-2007 I could hardly find one white bass there. A few weeks ago I saw three acres of 'em busting the surface at once - there are plenty of them again. This spring I was seeing lots of little 3" crappies that were hatched in the floods of 2008, and that's got to mean good crappie fishing in a few years. Also, those big slab crappie we're catching some of now must have had a whole bunch of little ones in the high water this spring - so there oughta be another bunch a year behind the 3-inchers. There's a good class of 11"-12" bass coming up too.

Yeah, it's tough. Last week I ran into a bass fisherman there from L.O.Z. who was pre-fishing for a tournament out of Bull Shoals. He was real unimpressed with the upper lake. I told him in the tournament he might want to run up as far as Theodosia, but for sure not to the upper lake. He'd be leaving better fishing down there where he was. In lots of trips this late summer and early fall, I've just had a couple of things going. Sometimes some of the deep brushpiles are fairly productive for crappie, and they're running big if you can find them. Sometimes, but not often now, white bass are boiling on top - but they'll only bite if they're surfacing. You can catch Kentucky bass all day long, but they're mostly 12-inchers. I've struck out completely on walleyes. I think those enormous schools of 1" shad minnows everywhere and the gar chasing them are hurting fishing. The fish can eat all they want anytime they want and they don't need to bite a lure.

Yeah, I've been watching them build that ramp and I scoped all around it a couple of weeks ago. It's on a shallow flat and even with the water a little above power pool like it is now, it's only 4' deep around there. That ramp won't be usable if the water gets low. I've heard that the corps intends to raise the power pool level by 8 or 9 feet, and if they do that the K Dock parking lot will be underwater - so maybe the MM ramp is meant to replace it. If so, it's pretty smart of 'em to build it before the water comes up. I just got back from there - no crappie, walleyes, or white bass today, just a whole bunch of Kentucky bass caught trolling the edges of flats. I'm easy to please, and catch-and-release bass are fun - the biggest one was 15 1/2". I never, ever crowd another fisherman - but part of the fun down there for me is a little snooping and adding points to my GPS. As I went out I saw a feller using his trolling motor to stay in one spot 'way out in the middle on the edge of a big flat where I didn't know there was a thing. Four hours later he was still on the same spot, then he came into the ramp right after I did. He asked how I'd done and I told him I'd only caught a bunch of bass, mostly short. He said he'd done the same "just fishing for anything that'll bite". Then as I drove off I saw him loading a bunch of slab crappie into a cooler. So there's a good brushpile I didn't know about out there, and I'll get that thing located next trip. Finding one of those is better than having a productive trip for me - that's the gift that keeps on giving.

My partner and I had a good trip out of K Dock yesterday (Thursday). Nine keeper crappie, mostly about 13" and my partner caught one 16-incher. 19 white bass, mixed sizes, some up to 3 lbs., and quite a few bass including two that would have been keepers. I caught a 3' gar on a crappie rod, which was quite a fight but disappointing when we finally saw what it was. Those white bass are being real difficult now. They started busting on top all over around Snapp Holler about noon, and we were chasing boils and throwing fish in the bottom of the boat. Then about 1:30 it was all over, and we couldn't find a white bass in the lake. When they're not boiling, they won't bite. There's a little color to the water and a little floating trash, but that big rain didn't hurt anything. The low road at K Dock is under water again.

Well, I learned another new thing here. It's obvious, but something I just never thought about before. At times I've used soft baits in colors like the crawdad pinchers I have to clean out of my live well - bright, light orange. I can't say I ever did very well on that color, but it seemed like it oughta work since it's the same color as a crawdad. But that's the color of a DEAD crawdad, and one that's been in a fish's stomach. No wonder I've always done better with dark greens and browns (and as Bill says, black/blue at night). Sometimes it takes a little nudge for me to understand something I should have figured out long ago.

Yes, I've made maybe 10 crappie/white bass trips out of K Dock in the last 6 weeks. Some of them have been real good, but there's no pattern to it. On Thursday, two brushpiles produced a limit of crappie (gotta love that GPS), then I caught an easy limit of white bass. Heck, I could have caught 200 white bass if I'd wanted to - I never saw so many of them surface and stay up for so long. I got to playing with them - throwing a Roostertail out and skipping it as fast as I could across the top of the water, and it'd get hit 5 or 6 times on the way in before a fish finally got hooked. Fun. But all these trips, the white bass won't bite unless they're surfacing. I've never seen 'em act so strange - you can troll for two hours in an area where there are thousands of white bass and be lucky to get one bite. Then they'll boil up somewhere and you're catching fish with every cast. Since they'll only bite when they're surfacing, and where and when they're gonna do that is unpredictable, it sure makes it a hit-or-miss proposition. I've found about the best thing is to run miles of the lake at about 25 mph and just keep looking. Then, once you find some surfacing stay around there because they'll come up again sooner or later. Strange behavior. And as Lilley says, I'm afraid it may all be over now. This rain is going to wash a lot of mud and debris into the upper lake, and that may change things.

Nope. I got real frustrated by a trip yesterday. Day before yesterday I got into white bass big time. From 2 to 3 in the afternoon, they were surfacing on a flat in 14' of water about a mile below K Dock. I've never seen so many of them stay up for so long. In a five acre area the boils were constant and everywhere - it didn't matter which way I cast out, I'd get hooked up anyway. I caught a quick limit, culled some small ones and filled it again, then caught and released fish until I got tired of it. So the next day, yesterday, I picked my 11 y.o. granddaughter up after school and we headed to the same spot. You guessed it - we worked that whole area and some besides hard all afternoon and didn't catch a single white bass. There were lots of minnows on top but no white bass surfacing at all, and no bites trolling either. The weather seemed the same as the day before, and conditions seemed fine, huge shoals of minnows on top - but no fish. I guess I'll never figure this fishing thing out.

Hey, jumping subjects again, but I just got back from a good day on Bull Shoals. Because of the discussion here, I took a little time off from crappie and white bass fishing and tried bass fishing with a splitshot rig and circle hook. It works! I hung a small Green Pumpkin Chompers 2-tail jig on a circle hook just like in that YouTube video above, and fished it off a rocky bank in about 20 feet of water. I caught 4 bass, all short, though one largemouth was 14 1/2". Fishing the splitshot rig with a semi-slack line and letting them run with it a couple of feet, I know the fish were swallowing the soft bait. No matter - the circle hook hooked all four of them right in the corner of the jaw. I went back to crappie and white bass fishing and had a real good day. Limits. I'll quit hijacking this thread now. I'm going to look at that knot cited above - I'm using PowerPro line which cuts itself off in a clinch knot, so I've been using the Palomar Knot. I sure hate tying the Palomar, though, especially with any lure that has treble hooks. Maybe this other knot will help.

Sure enough. I found the video here. What I learned from the video is that I don't have to bury the point of the hook in the bait for lures that are dragged, like splitshot and Carolina rigs. The point of the hook doesn't stick out, so it's pretty much weedless as-is. I'll be trying that. Circle hooks work real well because bass clamp their jaws tight once they've got a lure. Trying to pull a circle hook out through the closed mouth rotates the hook, and it sticks 'em right in the corner of the jaw. Like with the Senko, I think a big sweeping sideways hookset would be called for, rather than "crossin' their eyes".

Bill - I know they're not really shaped right for a through-the-nose and bury-the-point presentation in a soft bait, but is there any way you could make a Kahle-style circle hook work for that splitshot rig? The reason I ask - you know I'm not much of a bass fisherman, but every year I like to fish post-spawn in the spring with Senko worms. I hook those wacky-style with a Kahle hook, use no weight and a medium-heavy spinning rig, and cast and let 'em drop down beside stick-ups near spawning areas. I catch and release some big bass that way, around the last couple of weeks of May. With that presentation you're just watching for the slack line to twitch, then set the hook with a big sideways sweep of the rod. Bass swallow the worm every time that way, and if it wasn't for the circle hook they'd get gut-hooked. With circle hooks, though, it pulls the worm right out of their stomachs and you get a solid hookset through the hard part of the lip every time. If the circle hooks could be used, somehow, with the splitshot rig - maybe that'd solve the problem?

John, that puzzled me too. At first I was imagining skid marks on a beach, where Bill ran his boat out of the lake, over a hump, and into a private pond. Then I thought about it, and since Bill may not want to say any more on this subject, I'll make a good guess. Bill has fished that lake all his life, he runs a highly-respected guide service on it, and he knows lots of folks there. Now, if I was running one of those big marinas I'd fish it from time to time, right in between and under the docks - and I'd let a few friends fish there too. A good guy like Bill would respect the situation of course - it wouldn't be right to count those bass in a tournament, or to take guide customers there, or to fish it right in front of marina customers. The marinas don't let the general public fish there. There's nothing wrong with some personal fun catch-and-release fishing around the docks by a marina operator and his friends, and I bet'cha that's the answer. It's a good thing it's not me with such contacts - I'd be a lot more interested in those one-pound bluegills I see under there, and I'd be sorely tempted to put 'em in a frying pan!

T'wasn't me - I promise! Whoever wrote that note should have been there a couple months ago when the water was up and there was barely room to park 4 rigs and leave the launch ramp clear - and THEN someone got to spinning wheels in the middle of what was left of the lot and dug two pits you had to work around. I did some real creative backing then. I bet instead of parking the nose of your truck against the bluff, you pulled a hard left coming up the ramp and parked parallel to the bank, by the water. Nothing wrong with that, everybody does it - including me sometimes. About a month ago I was coming into K Dock and mine was the last rig left in the lot. As I got close a little car drove in, an Accord I think, and a young woman got out with a little dog. She was just walking, letting the dog play, and enjoying the lake, nothing wrong with that. Trouble is, with the whole parking lot empty she parked her Accord right across the top of the ramp, crossways! I killed the motor and sat 30 yards off the bank, just staring at her. I could tell I was making her uncomfortable - and all at once it was like a light bulb went on, she went to the car and moved it off the ramp. She just wasn't thinking, but it sounds like something one of my kids would do. A whole empty parking lot - and where do you park the car? Hey, congrats on the 6 lb. flathead on a crappie rig. I bet that put up some fight!

Yes, but I caught that fish about 10 years ago. It was over toward the east side where the Chateau and those big docks have gone in - and I haven't done near so well in that cove since those were built. I caught a 23 1/2" smallmouth a couple of years ago, night fishing in the summer on a point just south of State Park. I don't think the 26-incher would have been anywhere near a record - it was long and skinny and I doubt it weighed 7 lbs., but it's the best smallmouth I've ever caught. I didn't have a camera, but my partner sure remembers us measuring it.

Congratulations on catching "Bouncing Betty" - that's a fine fish. I don't fish for bass too often, but my personal "big bass" on Tablerock was a smallmouth that measured exactly 26". I had no camera and no scales, and she went right back into the water unharmed. I caught her in the big cove on the northeast corner between the dam and Indian Point - the one that big power line crosses. It was in January, and we were drifting smoke-color 3" grubs on a jighead on the bottom in 50' of water. As Bill says, the fish was skinny at that time of year - I figure she weighed close to 7 lbs., but that would have been more a few months later when she was full of eggs. Anyway, in 19 years of fooling around down there that's the closest to 10 lbs. I've ever come - so you did real good!

Well, every day is different. For me, it was the usual story of "you should have been here yesterday". We went out of Cow Creek today, I took a friend instead of my granddaughter. I'm glad I didn't take her. We fished hard from Little Cow Creek to Point 5 and back, from 1:30 p.m. until 7:30. We didn't catch a white bass, or even see a white bass boil - and believe me, we were trying and looking. There just weren't any. I believe the good reports here. We 'scoped 'em by the thousands in deep water, especially up by Point 5 and outside the mouth of Little Cow Creek. They were in 100'+ of water and none of them were less than 50' deep, mostly around 70'. We tried trolling even though we didn't have anything that would run near that deep. Nothing. We tried sitting still where they scoped the thickest and jigging very deep with spoons. Nothing. We saw a couple of other boats that were obviously fishing for white bass, and I don't think they caught a one either. It wasn't a total loss. We caught and released some short smallmouths, and they were fun. Finally, we went along some rocky banks with jigs and swimmin' minnows while still keeping an eye out for surfacing white bass. We brought about 20 big black perch home from doing that. It might be good again tomorrow, though - that's fishing.

Bill, Martin, CaptainJoe, and all - thanks for the ramp info! It sounds like there are two ramps. I'm familiar with that point by the mouth of Cow Creek where the old camp was. I didn't know there was a ramp, but it was launchable even without one with my light Tracker rig and 4wd. If the new ramp is steep and in the cove above Little Cow Creek, that's a little out of my way. I guess I'll just go down 65 and across 86 to Cow Creek. It'll be hard to cross that bridge and pass up the Long Creek arm though, I've had a lot of fun there. I'm glad those white bass are carrying on so - but it makes me wonder. They got thick like that on Bull Shoals in the fall of, I think, 2004 - and then the next spring you couldn't find a one. They've just now come back over there, and I hope that doesn't work the same way on Tablerock.

There's a new ramp at Little Cow Creek? Wow - I didn't know, and that's one of my favorite crappie holes. I usually get there by putting in at Mill Creek, and going around Point 7. A ramp there would save a whole lot of running in my little boat. How do I get there by road, please? I'll be crossing the bridge at Kimberling, southbound, but I don't know where to turn left to find the ramp. I've got an 11 y.o. granddaughter who just started school and loves to fish. I've been promising her a trip one day after school, fishing until dark. I'd like it to be a good one for her, and I'd sure like to get her into those white bass - she'd have a ball. We'll probably go tomorrow (Thursday) afternoon, especially if I can figure out how to find that new ramp. Thanks.

Over on Bull Shoals last Thursday, in the middle of the day, I ran from Bear Creek on the Arkansas line up to K Dock. I think that's about 6 miles - and I passed TWO fishing boats in that whole distance. They were both friendly and waved as I went by, too. I saw NO PWC's, water skiiers, heavy cruisers, tube-tow-ers, or houseboats throwing 4' wakes. No beer drinking, no spinning out boats at top speed and hollering "woo-hoo", no bikini girls (unfortunately), and I didn't hear any rap music. This was two days before the holiday weekend, but still. Fellers, I think the fishing's often better over on Tablerock - I really do. But the trade-off is sure worth it to me.

No answers, so I guess nobody here knows. I sure don't. Every time I drive over the bridge I see a few rigs parked at River Run. White bass are real active now in the lake, and I'd think there oughta be some in that cool running water below the dam, but I haven't gone to find out.