Crappie5

Lilley, have you heard when the official crest day/time will be? I think I heard sometime Saturday. Another confirmation- crest at 931. They're going to open the other flood gates this afternoon, bringing it up to all 10.

Looks like this will mess the Crappie fishing up for awhile. The lake has came up 7' since yesterday and is still on the rise. I remember the lake getting to 928 in the late 80's. I put in at Cape fair at the booth where you pay your fees and motored around the pick-nick tables.

SKMO, has the mud hit Kings river yet from all the rain? I have heard of 8-9" of rain fall in various places. I seen flat creek on 39 hwy up to the bridge yesterday and it is heading your way.

Well I put in at Violla and went up Kings loking for crappie Yesterday. Should have stayed home. Two of us caught a total of 8 crappie with only one keeper. The river is as bad as I have ever seen it. Muddy water and trash everywhere. From Violla to Hickory Hollow it was bad. visibility was about 4-5 inches in the water. Water temps at 7:30 am were 41 and finished the day at 46. We could not even load the boat up after we got back to the ramp because all the trash had blown up against the courtesy dock and had the ramp completely blocked. We had to load the boat up over in the campground area. Anyway there is the Kings river report.

I know what you mean about the fees and tickets. I put in a Viola last Feb and my rearview mirror had fell off so I layed my yearly pass on the dash up against the windshield and when I got back to the ramp from fishing there was a ticket under my windshield wipers. And over on the edge of the boat ramp layed the courtesy dock up on the bank.

Well I fought the wind up in the Kings yesterday looking for Crappie. Put in a 7:00 and left out at 3:30. "Nothing" would be the word for the day. I managed to pull in one 14" crappie and one 12" bass both on a red/white 1/16 oz tube jig. Still a little early. Water temps averaged 45 degrees. I agree with Babbler, this is as tough as I have seen it. Water levels rising, fronts in and out, there is just not a pattern right now. We need some steady day and night temps. I heard of several doing pretty good in James river catching crappie on Saturday.

I have been going up in the Kings arm and have not found any yet. The water needs to warm up a little more. I have been seeing 40-41 degree water lately, maybe hitting 43 late afternoon if the sun is out. last week I caught 6 keepers and probably 10 shorts on a smoke colored swimming minnow. Most of the keepers came out of 30' water about 18'-20' down and most of the shorts came out of docks. I talked to a guy at the Viola ramp who had a limit of crappie on minnows that he caught out og brush piles. I hope to have a better report later as I will start hitting it hard in about 2-3 weeks.

We seen some guys sinking some trees made out of PVC pipe the other day. Sounds like a pretty good idea. Is this legal? Does the Corp regulate anything on sinking things like this? These PVC trees would be there forever and you probably would not hang up in them as bad.

What part of the lake were they on. The paper said Jakes, is this Jakes up in Kings River?

Did anyone hear or see of any damage to the area lakes after last nights storms?

Bill, why are these fish holding so deep? Shouldn't they be a little shallower this time of year? I finally got a break at work and will be off until Jan 3 so I will probably go most every day. Sounds like spoons is the hot thing right now. I used to catch a lot of fish spooning but in the last couple years I have not done too well. I usualy vertical jig the spoon in the trees or cast out in into bass chasing shad. Has the presentation changed? What is the best way to fish the spoon this time of year?

Anyone been crappie fishing? I'm off for the next 10 days and thought I might try to find a few crappie. Buddy of mine seen a guy yesterday up in the King's river pulling crappie after crappie out of a boat dock. He said there were a lot of small ones but he probably seen him catch over a limit of 12"-13" ones. Never kept a one. He was throwing minnows on a cork.

Babbbler are you on Vacation? Have not seen a report since the Sloan weekend. Did you fish the Champion Tourney?

I 100% agree with Babbler. This lake is not a largemouth fishery anymore. I used to night fish 2 tourneys every week. You can catch a few fish out of brush piles at night and hit the same ones during the day and never catch a fish. Bass simply in general do not hold up in brush piles. Crappie on the other hand, you can sink a coffee can and they will hide around it.

Don, that is quite nice of you to be willing to post a guide trip to help a good cause. I'd sure like to win that. Be good for your business also. Now what would be even better would be a tournament consisting of all the guides on the rock. That would be something to see. Similar to back when I was racing on local dirt tracks and they built two cars identical and put on special shows during intermission to where they put two of the top drivers in these identical cars and turned them loose on the track. Clearly came down to the best driver. Let's put the best fisherman (You guides) on the same lake,"THE ROCK". The last place has to wash one of the other guides boat, next up has to throw in a 1/2 day guide trip, next place full day guide trip all the way up to 1st place walking away scott free knowing he is the best for that day. Just a little humor........we can't get enough of that in life.

Anyone fishing the Champion boat owner appreication tournament this weekend? Just curious, I heard yesterday they were up to 100 boats. I thought about fishing because I do own a Champion. Just to let anyone know that I talked to Dave Barnett with Champion yesterday and he said they were waiving the $25 late entry fee this year to see if they could get the boat numbers back up. You were supposed to have your $200 entry in 10 days prior to the tournament to avoid a $25 late fee.

My experience with the gar is nothing but gar. I have never spooned under them to see if there are any Bass though, makes sense. I have been on Bass & Crappie one day and then the next gar are everywhere and can't catch anything. I was way up the Kings yesterday looking for a crappie bite and found several gar rolling. I wound up with 11 keeper crappie on mostly minnows a few on jigs. Had one 14" crappie and one 14-1/2". My counter had 66 crappie on it before the end of the day. Lots and lots of real small crappie moving up right now.

Lakebumb, I don't know what the Pro's like Babbler are doing but we are dragging jigs with the trolling motor and in some cases such as Sat in the Sloan tourney the wind done all the work for us. It is still the same trial by error game with Bass as to how fast they want the bait. We started out dragging with the trollong motor slow and did not do very good. Then we started dragging by letting the wind pull us down pretty fast and seemed to catch more fish. Picture it as your wife fishing with you. My wife will sometimes out fish me if I don't keep an eye on her. She will be dragging a jig around behind the boat while I'm really working a bait in a brush pile. The sad part is that she is not even trying but simply dragging a jig to pass time by. A few weeks ago she caught 3 fish totaling 9.5lb dragging a jig behind the boat while I was power fishing spinner baits and crank baits. You would have thought I was moving way too fast.

Bill, thanks for the advice. I believe all the fish we lost were on the football jig and most we lost came up and threw the jig. I once trimmed all the weed guard off and felt like it helped. It just seemed like we could not get a good hook set. One thing I did not mention was the wind and we dealt with a lot of boats/jet ski activity. seemed like everytime you got a good bite you were dealing with the boat moving all over the place. The 5lb fish my partner lost was tough, when he set the hook hew fell back because of wake from a huge boat that just went by us. The fish came up 20' from the net and simply came off. Do you drag a jig much at all? Does braided line possibly help when dragging 30 water as far as hook set. I guess we did not break any off. Anyway all advice from you Pro's is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Okay, I need you guys experience with graphs. Mine quit this weekend and is time to upgrade a little anyway. Man!! Have you went and looked at graphs lately, there are hundreds to choose from. Any advice on what to shy away from or to really look for? I can't afford anything really expensive but can any of you point me in the right direction. I would like to have the sensitivity to see my baits when drop shotting. Any advice from you guys that use them every day would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Bill, we also fished the Homer Sloan tournament Sat. It was good to fish against you and Beck my partner and I consider you guys to be some of the very best on the Rock. I wanted to introduce my self at the dinner and got side tracked. We only beat our selves all day. We weighed in two K'S at a total of 4.81. We lost enough fish to have our limit. 20 minutes before weigh in my partner lost a solid 5lb fish. We fished the biggest part of the day around the Baxter area hitting all brush piles and could not catch anything but real small fish. We ended up dragging a football jig in 30' of water to start catching larger fish. We caught approx. 20 fish draggging a jig. Just before weigh in we caught our keepers in the Knob area at the end of boat docks in 32' of water and they were both right on the bottom on football jigs. In the end we still had a great time.

Anybody night fishing around the Viola Area? Anyway where do they go at night, same tactics as fishing during the day? I was heading down tonight and any advice would be greatly appreciated.

I love to eat the Whites. If you cut the brown/red meat off of them and discard you will find them really good. I have had many fish fries and told people they were eating Crappie and they did not know the difference. Thanks for the report.

I have fished the Cape Fair area for the last 20 years and the end of April into the first couple weeks of May I usuallly do pretty good on the deep bluffs throwing a DD-20 or DB-30 crank bait. My favorite color is orange and chartreuse. It seems like I catch a lot of big large mouths that spawn deep or they are in a late pre-spawn period, but anyway they usually have their tails really tore up and red. I was down Yesterday and caught 5 keepers out of 17 total fish. The smallest keeper was 3.5 lb. and the largest was 6.25 lb. Hope this helps.

My partner and I was up in Kings river yesterday and we brought home 30 crappie. We fished from sunrise until 2:30 p.m. We were using red/white tube jigs on 1/16 oz jig head tipped with a small live minnow. Most of the fish came right off the banks early. We had 23 keepers by 10:00 a.m. and realy struggled to finish out our limits. The rest were in brush piles. We probably caught 20 Kentucky's using the same methods. No keeper K'S but mostly in the 12"-14-1/2" range. 60 degree water and really clear in the Sweetwater area. As you get on up in the river the water stained up pretty good. Going to head up tonight and night fish some of the banks we have been catching all the Kentucky's on. Good Luck and Good Fishing.