Crappie Report - Week Of 4/17-4/21

[shockley32]

The crappie fishing continues to be fantastic, however within this week they are starting to move and scatter. Monday and Tuesday the fish were still concentrated in deeper water, find the right brush pile and load the boat in a hurry. Most of these fish were in the 11" to 11.5" range, however there were a handful of sub legal fish you had to weed through.

Thursday through Saturday the fish started to scatter - still deep fish but the graph was showing probably half as it did early in the week. They have started moving shallower and you can now catch fish from 10 fow to 50 fow. They are biting very aggressive and it is a lot of fun. We've been catching two limits in 2-3 hours.

Throughout the week the water level has come up, currently about five feet high. We have also gone from not pulling water to pulling some which does slightly change the behavior of the fish, typically it helps the bite. The water temp cooled last weekend with the cold front/rain that moved through, it has been gradually climbing every day. Today's average was 63 degrees.

Been using jigs and catching the fish suspended over the brush, sorry no tree fishing to report for most of them are under water. I like to throw tripple ripple grubs when casting and reeling back, more shad body baits when vertial jigging. Both methods have been working well, however staying off the brush, casting, counting down to the top of the brush and reeling back has been the best, at least I've been able to catch more per pile using this method. It is probably faster to vertical fish but I've not caught nearly as many before the bite slows. Color: glow chart, blue/chart, black/chart, blue thunder/chart, electric chicken, blue/white, blue crystal/shad, blue shad.

Both the Pomme arm and Lindly have been great - Lindley is fairly dirty from Pittsburg Landing to just past the bridge, the first 9 miles of the Pomme arm has great visibiity.

I'm not fish expert but it appears the crappie are currently spawning - from Monday to today the eggs in the females have considerably diminished, there are probably 20-25% of their eggs left. Here's the puzzling part, perhaps someone can shed some light - I've caught several crappie this week in 35-40 fow, when I pull them in they are oozing eggs - also several of the females are obviously releasing thier eggs as noticed when cleaning however where are they spawning? Do they go shallower at some point during the evening/night and return deeper during the day or are they just laying their eggs in deeper water? I know all fish are a little different and will spawn are varying temperatures and depths, some will always spawn deeper than what we realize, but what's going on with these fish??

Good luck and have a great week fishing!!!

Brad

[CapnKenny]

Regarding the females, I read someplace that when the females come in towards the bank and release their eggs they only release a portion and return to deeper water afterwards. They will do this several times, it is Mother Nature's way a preserving the species (in case the lake level drops suddenly and the eggs are left high and dry). The cooler weather this week probably has pushed the fish out a little deeper than normal.

[MOPanfisher]

I went out with a friend on Tuesday evening to troll crankbaits for crappie, new thing for me. We ended up catching a few, but not many, although more than other fishermen were getting. The brushpiles are absolutely blown up with fish on them, I assume waiting till dark to move to the bank, spawn a little and move back out. Once the spawn is over the crankbait thing should be awesome, we will see. I am also seeing a tremendous hatch of fry in the shallow waters, werent sure what they were, but today I scooped up a few in a smalll net to look closer at, they are so small and nearly transparent its hard to tell for sure, but judging by the small mouth that appears to be almost upturned slightly I believe they are gizzard shad, so the food base seems to be safe for another year. The water on the lower end of the lake is not quite as clear, starting to get some of the greenish cast to it from suspended algae. Dang weather just won't stabilize long enough for me to work on them. On the plus side my buddy has a Humminbird Down Imaging unit on his trolling motor and while trolling the crankbaits we find many many more brushpiles that with the push of a button become marked in its GPS memory, makes me want one of those units just for that purpose.