It's On For Crappie!

[Goggle-Eyed]

Man, I hate to post this but you guys have been helpful on other waters.... It is on at the lake right now! Things have broken loose! Lots of shallow fish and 10" seems to be the minimum for keeping a limit in under an hour!

Bass fishing is just as good right now, but I am keyed in the crappie!

Joe

[Jbrant]

What part of the lake are you on? Headed down tomorrow afternoon.

[97procraft]

I will be heading down this weekend also. Are you using jigs or minnows?

[nomolites]

They are holding on transitions near gravel on the N Shore. Sliders are my choice but any jig will likely do.

[97procraft]

thanks

[Goggle-Eyed]

Mid Lake confluence, 1/16th ounce jigs. about any color but Black/Char was hot this week. They were SHALLOW... I am going tomorrow but need to fire off the jet jon first so I am gonna run up the Big Niangua and look for some whites, was planning on just Crappie but called a boat mechanic today that was squealing like a little kid, he was looking at white bass up near the Gravois Arm... Got me pumped about the hitting the shallower water....

I will probably hit the lake in the afternoon... I will post reports for both!

Joe

[97procraft]

Wow, after reading some of the other posts, I feel really good about my fishing this weekend. My buddy and I fished the area around Captain Ron's and did really well. Friday night we ended up with 15 total. All on jigs and in 5' or less. Saturday was more of the same. We fished from 8-11 am took a break to fix a few things at his place and headed out that evening. The evening bite, 6.30 to 8.30, was on fire. We ended up with 30 for the day. Fished from 7-10 this morning and had to search for them, but found them in the same depth in a different part of the cove. Ended up with 10 more today. Almost 2 limits each and 4 catfish on jugs made it a great couple of days.

Side note, only 3 crappie we cleaned had eggs in them.

[stuartsx5]

97procraft, is the jug fishing pretty good there this time of year. I made up a bunch of jugs last year and never used them. Would really like to give it a try. Did you free float them or anchor?

[Goggle-Eyed]

Wow, after reading some of the other posts, I feel really good about my fishing this weekend. My buddy and I fished the area around Captain Ron's and did really well. Friday night we ended up with 15 total. All on jigs and in 5' or less. Saturday was more of the same. We fished from 8-11 am took a break to fix a few things at his place and headed out that evening. The evening bite, 6.30 to 8.30, was on fire. We ended up with 30 for the day. Fished from 7-10 this morning and had to search for them, but found them in the same depth in a different part of the cove. Ended up with 10 more today. Almost 2 limits each and 4 catfish on jugs made it a great couple of days.

Side note, only 3 crappie we cleaned had eggs in them.

Yep, I talked to a couple of other buddies that said it was like a light switch around 6-6:30pm. They fished from 1pm to 6pm with about 10 fish in the boat, limited pretty quickly after the switch was flipped!

[97procraft]

stuartsx5, I haven't found a bad time of year yet. My favorite time is the fall (October), just because the boat traffic is less and the cats bunch up and feed consistantly. The earliest I have started jugging has been early March. We ended up with 12 in one day that time. I stay away from LOZ in the summer time, so I don't know what the fishing is like then.

We anchor ours with a 10-16oz weight, and have one hook 5' off the bottom and another 10' off the bottom. I try to find them on the fish finder and then drop the line right in the group. You can catch a ton of fish if you find them first. Jugging for cats was kind of an after thought, so we only used two jugs this weekend. If we go down targeting cats we will use 10-15 jugs. My buddy likes using shad, I like using small bluegil. Those 2.5-3" bluegil will catch more fish than the bigger ones. Our 4 cats were in the 5-10 lb range.