Crappie Report - Wednesday, 4/4

[Dollar Bill]

Always love bass fishing but it's time to put some fish in my belly! (and the freezer too). The problem is I suck at catching walleye and crappie. Getting better at the cats and am really looking forward to them moving up on the rocks soon. But today I tried to catch some crappie. Put in at High Point about 8:30. Thought it would be slow there but there were only about 8 trailers at Aldrich and I took one of the last parking spaces at HP! Didn't seem that crowded though and I fished where I wanted to. Started up in Turkey, nuthin. Moved over to Morgans, nuthin. Hit some pockets east of there and blanked too... Caught a few short blacks and small whites. Finally ended up between HP and Aldrich on some treed banks and pockets and found them... They're probably everywhere but I finally figured out how to catch them. 6 foot down. That was the key for me today. Caught fish on hook and minnow, jig and minnow and bare jig. Color didn't seem to matter nor which combo. Depth was 6 fow to 20 fow. But the bait had to be at 6-7 foot down. You could see them on the graph suspended over tree tops and brush but even when they were next to a stump, 6 foot down was the deal. Caught about 40 crappie but only 16 keepers. 11 of the 15 cleaned were females but only had 2 slabs. The rest were 11" maybe. Had 3 doubles as I fished with a rod in each hand. The bite got better later in the day and when the clouds were blocking the sun. Great day and hopefully it won't take me 10 hours to limit next time!

good luck!

bill

[MoSportsmen]

I am not a great crappie fisher either. Interesting you say the bite was better when the clouds were overhead. I have always thought crappie were a sun loving fish. I have always done better on bass with cloud cover and went to crappie when the sun was high.

Tom