Todays Trip

[straw hat]

Headed to CC with a boat load of minnows this morning. I think we fished every peice of standing timber from CC to the north end of Shaw's bluff!! We caught a total of 4 small crappie (maybe 5" long each). Water temp was from 82 to 87. We didn't even see anything on the old fish finder. It was nice out though and not too many people out so I won't complain too much.

[frying eyes]

Tough day for me to! Fished from crabtree to 245bridge. Only a smallmouth, largemouth, and catfish. Was fishing for crappie /walleye! Beautiful day though.

[charliehorsejigs]

Same luck on my end too. We fished from mutton creek to shaw's bluff before we got one bite. My buddy got one small channel cat and one crappie within two minutes of each other at shaw's bluff and that was the only bites we had. Saw some friends that had limited out twice the previous weekend, they had the same lousy day we did. I think i may just hide in my basement and tie jigs and daydream about catching crappie until we get some rain. Surely once the lake gets filled back up and cools off the fishing will get better.

[jbeenemd]

I was able to get out Saturday also. Put in at Mutton Creek and motored down to Birch Branch. Tried jigging in the timber. There were absolutely no fish of any kind in the timber. Water temps in the 85 degree range. My graph picked up fish out in the open water from 10 to 25 feet and were scattered throughout that range. So tried trolling with a pearl white Bandit 300. Let it out between 30 to 40 feet and trolled at 1 to 1.25mph. Caught two crappie a little over 10 inches and one 12 inch crappie. Also caught and released one large mouth bass that was 14.75 inches. Should have tried trolling earlier and longer, however, unfortunately one of my two batteries picked this weekend to fade away. I think that I was getting the Bandit down to about 15 feet as when I went over structure at that depth I would hit it.

One tip with trolling a Bandit 300 is to have plenty of line and a light drag setting (don't need much drag with crappie or at least the ones I catch). You will hit structure and "hang up". Stop the boat and let the line go slack, back up and reel up the slack slowly. Sometimes it will simply float back to the surface. of the dozen or more times I thought I was hung up I never had any problems getting it unstuck. The only bait that I have lost this summer was due to having the drag stick on a bait caster that I had not used recently. I am thinking that with that long bill on it that it will hit and catch on that and not the hooks. Don't need any fancy expensive lead core line or line counters for this type of fishing.

Talked to another couple that had been out on Friday and they reported catching a lot of fish on minnows and no success on Saturday morning. There were perhaps a dozen boats that came and went Sat morning. I only saw two other fish boated by them. My guess is that the when the front came through, it brought lower pressures and the fish stopped biting. Should get better later this week. Give the fish 3 or 4 days and they will be hungry again!!

Jackie

[waterpossum]

Put in at 6 p.m. Saturday eve. at Stockton Old State Park ramp and motored north and fished a couple of points south of Crabtree with night crawlers and picked up 4 channels 1 bass and a short walleye. At dark motored back to the mouth of Old State Park cove and sat out the lights, ended up with 12 keeper crappie all on minnows. Couldn't get em to hit a jig. I ran out of minnows fairly early so to be able to continue started dipping small minnows around the light. It wasn't easy as they would just show up one at a time and most eluded my dip net. When I left and unhooked the lights I shined a flashlight on the water and there were literally hundreds that had surfaced next to the boat. I had no idea there were that many out of sight under the lights. Crappie were 15-20' deep over 40' of water.

[eyeman]

kwall and i was out sat and again sun am and ended up with 6 walleye,2 catfish, 9 crappie, and 11 bluegills total bag.it was awfully slow on the walleyes as that is what we were mainly after.

[skeeterfisher]

Waterpossum, when you fish the mouth of a cove like you did with lights, do you look for structure to put your lights over or just set them out?

[waterpossum]

Usually try to set up fairly close to the main lake channel. Of course the wind plays a big role in what you can actually do. My experience over time is when you come out of most coves and cross the channel the graph lights up with huge schools of bait fish. I am trying to attract these fish and hope the crappie will follow. There are other people that have success tying to trees over deep water, which is a lot less hassle than trying to drop two anchors and get them to hold tight. Noticed a lot of people tied to the bridge piers too.

[skeeterfisher]

Makes sense, I tied to a tree on an outside row of trees in 30 ft of water, had a million baitfish but only caught a couple crappie, thks.