The Right Water Temp?

[lonkm]

According to what I read walleye and crappie start moving when the water hits 40+. Is anyone catching anything? besides a runny nose! I have talked to several people and none of them are getting any fish. Is the water still too cold or what? I have been slow trolling, vertical jigging and casting with a slow retrieve on the bottom and still nothing. Please share, I need all the help I can get. LOL

[Sam]

I haven't gone fishing yet this year because of cold weather, then cold water and poor reports.

Last January, a year ago, Phil Lilley and Bill Babler reported that slab crappie were biting in the K Dock area. They were - I made 4 or 5 trips where I limited out, and the fish were in bushes where flats dropped off into channels in about 20' depth.

So far as I've heard, that isn't happening this January. I think the difference is that the surface water temp on those trips a year ago was about 48, as we hadn't had a real cold spell. I don't know what the water temp is now, but I bet it's colder than that. Since the water got cooled off so much during the early January cold spell, I think it's going to have to warm up to the mid-40's or so before much good happens.

There's not much chance of that happening now, until maybe March.

[nxs]

We made it down a couple of days last week and put in at Beaver.

While we didn't catch many we did catch some crappie, perch and 1 short walley.

First day we had a black crappie that probably went close to 2# and several large perch that must have just come up out of deeper water as light colored as they were.

I think we ended up with about 10 crappie and 7 perch that were keepers in the 2 days.

Not too many shorts.

When the water quit moving the bite went too.

The bite was so lite we missed many. We were dragging the bottom for the most part.

We caught nothing deepr than 12' and some as shallow as 5'. Surprised us too.

My graph was showing 45* and 46* but not sure how accurate it is.