streamer

Thanks for the compliment. I keep experimenting with different configurations for trolling and occasionally use planer boards, but they aren’t practical for most of my crappie trolling. Trolling long runs on flats for walleye, planer boards work well. When you need to make a turn to get back on a school of nomadic crappie, not so much! I’ll be adding a set of 16’ rods to my arsenal before next year! I’ll probably put the rod racks back on the front of the boat on occasion and experiment with pushing cranks again also. Sounds like a good option for quick turns to get back on those schools of crappie!

Got to spend the morning on Stockton with a new friend a week or so ago. We had a great time, but fishing wasn’t fantastic that day. I had much better luck the following day when I snapped some weights on to get the crankbaits down deeper. Check out his YouTube channel, he has lots of good videos on there. https://youtu.be/d39KteySReE

I just used snap weights this time, but have used 3-way swivels and a sinker off of a dropper line in the past! 30 feet of lead core line ahead of a bait works well also.

Found some fish out deeper today. An ounce of lead out ahead of the crankbaits got them in the strike zone.

That’s crazy how deep the thermo is. This is by far the clearest water I’ve seen on Stockton though. Those are beaver lake thermocline depths. I guess I’ll dive a little more in Stockton this year and skip out on a few scuba trips to Beaver lake!

Thanks for putting this tournament together. We had a good time on the lake and discussions with the other fishermen at weigh in. Looking forward to doing this again next year!

If staying for the meeting is not a requirement, can other arrangements be made? I’d be happy to fill out a form and send it back by whatever means necessary along with a check, money order or PayPal payment. For entry fee plus an additional Absent fee if needed! Getting out of work in Joplin at 6, heading to Springfield to pay, then getting home at 9pm to pack the boat. That cuts into family time and limits sleep before getting out of the house at 5am. Please let me know if other arrangements can be made. Thanks

Haven’t heard anything about this in a while. Has anything changed?

That’s good to hear! I looked at my calendar and it looks like I’ll be able to make it, already found a buddy to be my partner also. I hope there’s a ton of boats that show up, it’d be nice to meet a bunch of the local crappie fisherman.

I’ll probably fish this tournament if I can make it over as it’s for a good cause and Stockton doesn’t have many crappie tournaments. I feel there is a need for more crappie/walleye tournaments on Stockton. Having said that, I’m wondering if no one has responded yet due to the lower payout. I’m not trying to stir anything up here or criticize, I’m just observing that no one has replied to this post yet. There are a bunch of local crappie fisherman that follow this forum. Hope you get a great turnout and I’m looking forward to tournament. Thanks for the invite.

Where is Bud's bait at? Sounds like I need to stop in there sometime and get some binks spoons!

Made it back out today to BB for walleye with the youngest kiddo and a friend. Not as good of a day as we had on Labor Day because of no breeze or chop on the lake. Managed to get a dozen fish to the boat with 6 keepers over 4 hours. Still beats a good day at work!

Rps pretty much nailed it. Channel swings near points or flats always have some fish nearby somewhere. Might take a while to find them, and always a chance of them being tight lipped, but they will be around there somewhere during late summer/early fall.

The Arkie 350 series is very similar to the bandit 300 and has some colors almost identical to mad cow. They can be bought for $3.50 each and work about identical. I stocked up on about 25 Arkies this summer because of the Bandit price hike. No complaints yet, but they do run about 1' shallower with 100' of line out.

Nice work! We found a good bite mid afternoon that started slowing down after 5pm. Makes me wonder if the dam cut back generation around that time!

Took the family out on the lake today, got to spend part of the afternoon chasing walleye. My youngest had a great time cranking in the eyes. Boated 22, brought home a few to stock up for winter. BB in 13-17fow.

I was there Saturday morning also around hawker point area. Caught a few crappie at daybreak trolling flickershad/bandits. The sun came up and the crappie pushed down too deep for the crankbaits. I guess that's what happens when my graph shows the thermocline in 24-27fow. I then switched to a slow death rig and hunted around for the walleye. It took some searching but found some in 20-23fow next to a channel swing. Caught 4 keeper walleye in less than an hour once I found them. Went back sunday evening to find another limit of eyes!

Very true, I use to have issues with that. A soft rod tip, loose drag and line clickers come in handy for this though.

For crappie, 1.6-1.8mph is usually my target speed. I have switched over to all braid 10-15lb test (which actually tests out closer to 25-35lbs with a polymar or double polymar knot). This will save you money on crankbaits! Also use a strong snap swivel and lighter duty hooks. So what if you straiten a hook on a brushpile, I have pliers in the boat for that, and a crappie won't straiten that same hook! I can now pull free 95% of the crankbaits I would lose on 10lb mono, and the crappie don't seem to mind the line visibility issue (not always true with walleye). Plus the thinner diameter braid vs mono gains me extra depth. I use mostly okuma Magda line counters, so I always know my bait depth. I also use different colored braids on different poles so I can more easily rectify crossed lines. Also, I almost never use a plug retriever anymore. Having 6-8 rods out at once with any wind makes using that plug retriever difficult at best! As noted by others, speed is almost irrelevant on depth 99% of the time I'm trolling. These are the methods I have come to utilize for trolling crankbaits for the last decade on Stockton. There's always room for improvement, but these tips work well for multiple rod trolling.

If you need weight to get them down but not sure how much, make some keels so you can change weight easily...

I've tried something similar with a bandit 300 a ball bearing swivel, 6" of line and slow death hook. But, I was trying it at crankbait trolling speeds. I'm guessing you're slowing it down to about 1 mph? Nevermind, I see the flicker rig is just a dual hook crawler harness!!!!

I will troll them when I have an extra "experienced" hand in the boat. I ran 2 offshore tackle boards with tattle flags on Saturday. They are handy when you find shallow fish that'll spook with a boat over them!

Trolling, but you don't have to troll. The key was finding the fish under shad in open water using Side/Down imaging. Then getting baits down to that depth. The more time you spend over those fish, the better you'll do. Also, most of the bigger fish were around 20' deep. They are feeding on 1.5"-2" shad, so make sure your lure/jig is comparable in size to that!

Thanks Dan, it was a good time!

Had a good time fishing main lake before all the boats made it out this morning!