Seth

This was at Maramec, not Montauk.

That's true when you only fish for them when they move shallow. Late fall and winter is feast or famine. You may scan 100 docks before you find the motherload. Good luck catching them on those days without side imaging. If it was so easy, there would be A LOT less guys asking what the crappie are doing. Besides, you live on the lake and probably have enough crappie holes at this point that a graph doesn't do much anyways. You hit enough of them and you're bound to find some fish. I've always said that if you fish an area enough, you don't need fancy graphs to find fish. Some of the best anglers I know don't have a clue how to run a graph. Time on the water is always the best option if you have the time. Spring time is great when you actually hit the weather right. Those big cold fronts that screw up the spawn bite like to show up on a Friday/Saturday and ruin it for the weekend angler though. Those cold fronts don't bother those winter fish much if any.

As you get better at using your side imaging, catching crappie on LoZ almost becomes a gimme.

Guy posted a report an hour ago talking about how they hammered the crappie this past weekend. They were bass fishing and caught crappie on jerkbaits and then switched to crappie gear and pounded on them. Rock to pea gravel transitions and fishing jigs below a float. Like shrapnel said, it can be really bad or really good. You just have to find the fish. I know not everybody has side imaging, but I can not stress enough as to just how valuable that tool is for crappie fishing, especially when you're on new water.

Buddy and I fished from 2:30-6. We each caught between 10-15 fish. He drifted an orange powerbait trout worm on a small jighead the entire time and I bounced between jigs, trout worms and trout magnets. Water is starting to clear up a little bit. You could see a "dingy" couple of feet with polarized glasses. Just enough that I did catch a few fish sight fishing with a white trout magnet. There are still some nice fish in the stream, but we had to weed through several small fish to get a decent stringer. This post has been promoted to an article

I caught a big a big bull gill last weekend while crappie fishing. I'd almost forgotten how hard those little guys fight since I hadn't caught one in a long time! You could tell right away that it wasn't a crappie the way it was bull dogging and making those tight circles.

Here is a link to the video tab of his channel. It should automatically show you the newest videos first. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwcRHlU-7RKUvIVq7IhWHOw/videos

If you want to catch some bass, @duckydoty and @Phil Lilley are the guys to get advice from!

I'm debating on just using Pline Premium CX in moss green on everything this year. I love that stuff for trout fishing. I got a spool of Seaguar AbrazX 15# for xmasthat I will be running on a my jig and swimbait setups to start out with though. Curious to see how it compares to Red Label and InvizX.

You must not fish behind docks with jigs much...... I like using 15# for the majority of my fishing on the rivers. My cranking setup has 10-12# and spinning has 15# braid with 8-10# fluorocarbon leader. If I go up to LoZ and plan on skipping jigs around docks, then I will bump up to 20# fluorocarbon.

Sounds like my luck when it comes to catching those bigger trout. Everybody I have taken for the past couple years has caught a bigger fish than me during the trip. I always put it to them on numbers, but one of these days I'll be the blind hog that finds the acorn and hook a good one. Me and a couple buddies are heading back down that way after work on the 14th. The plan is to snag the James when its dark, power nap and then trout fish on Taneycomo during the daylight. We'll probably cut the snagging short that second night and get a decent night of rest as we will be feeling it by that point. Snagging wears a guy down a bit more than trout fishing. Hopefully we can catch a few of those stinking walters! That wouldn't hurt my feelings at all!

Water is high and dirty, but fishing is great. Dad and I caught 25-30 between 8-10:30 on jigs and drifting an orange trout worm beneath a float near the bottom. He had his wacky rigged on a treble hook with split shot and I rigged mine inline on a jighead. He had a nice hook jawed lunker around 20” on for a bit, but the hook popped out during the fight when it was rolling on the surface. We fished above and below the riffle near the back parking lot.

It wasn't bad. Actually, I had no intentions of fishing that spot because it tends to get busy. There was a big gap with nobody standing in it when we got down tot he water about 20 minutes before the buzzer went off so we took it. The fish like to stack up about 10' in front of us in that spot so no need to cast way out and increase risk of getting tangled with other anglers. My father in law isn't the best at casting, but that spot was perfect for him since most folks were throwing out beyond that seam.

We only fished for the first hour. I forgot to tell my father in law to not keep his fourth fish right away so we could fish a while. He was done in about 20 minutes and I didn't want to make him stand around all morning while dad and I fished.

The 3 pounder (actually 2.93) was one that he caught from your dock on a crawler when we stopped by to fish for a few hours just before Christmas. Would have rather seen it swim off, but it was his fish and he really wanted to eat it so I cleaned it for him. That guy had me rolling. He was trying to help his kids catch some fish and kept jumping their case for this and that. I'm sure I sounded EXACTLY like that when I was introducing Cari to trout fishing back in the day. Teaching people how to trout fish stresses me out too!

We only fished about an hour. One of the guys that went kept his first four and I didn’t want to make him stand around all morning waiting on us. I caught around a dozen and kept four that were 14-15” and headed back home. I threw jigs. Had to get them down on bottom to get bit. The others used dough bait and velveeta to catch their fish.

Hopefully it lasts for at least two weeks. I’ll be down to snag on the James at midnight on the 15th and then plan on hitting Taneycomo that afternoon and maybe omagain on the 16th. I love fishing a shad kill!

I'm swinging by Walmart to pick up a GoPro hat mounting kit so I can sport the GoPro tomorrow. That should help me stand out a little bit.

The James Foundation Facebook page says it's slightly high and murky. That's fine with me! Last year after the flood hit, we experienced some of the best trout fishing I've ever had down there. The fish were slamming jerkbaits and spoons in that high dirty water. I had one that day that was 17" and shaped like a football. It wasn't quite 3#, but I know it was 2.5#+.

I'd much rather fish Taneycomo anyways. Are you fishing from a boat? Sounds like they are going to be running water hard to try and get caught up from all of the rain they got last week. Hopefully it flushed a lot of that muddy and trash out of the way by now. Fishing last Saturday in the Elfrink was a freaking mess and the fishing was horrible. You know it's bad when very few limits are weighed and you get third with a measly 6.10#!

I know a few of you mentioned in another thread about going down tomorrow. I'm just following to see who is still on and who isn't. Sounds like me, dad and my father in law are going down for the buzzer. We'll be somewhere around the cleaning station and the river bend near back parking lot when the buzzer goes off. Just checked the forecast and it looks like it will in the low 40's and windy. Might have to dig out some gloves to protect those hands.

Bagnell is generating hard all week. Won't that drag the muddy water even closer to the dam by the weekend?

Aside from the initial spider web and people getting tangled up, I guess the funniest thing would be when this guy had his hat blow off in to the stream and he proceeded to strip down and bail off in to the stream to retrieve said hat. The other memory I have from opening day was when the water was up just over the top of the side walks across from the back parking lot. One guy hooked a lunker and it ended up jumping up on to the concrete and started swimming around like a salmon going through shallow water. It ended up swimming under one of the bench seats that were near them. The guys buddy flopped down on his stomach and laid in front of the bench to trap the fish and got soaked! They got the fish though!