7/6 Monte Ne

[bferg]

Highlights:

Monte Ne

6:15 to 10:15 AM- cool and cloudy!

Trolling flicker shads- various shad colors (you troll any color you want as long as it is white and black!)

10 crappie all caught in 28-30 fow- either suspended at about 20 or on humps that came up to 20 fow

My brother, my 6 yr old daughter and I got on the water at 6:15. We didn't have much of a plan but did have the 4 rods rigged with Flicker Shads, a few Kai Techs and some top water.

Tried some top water for a bit with no luck. Decided to troll and within 5 minutes my daughter was hooked up with something big- sadly right at the boat - POP- whatever was on was gone- reeled up the line to see it totally frayed. Assuming it was a very nice walleye. I was just sick about it but that would soon be -almost forgotten....(as if you ever forget the ones that get away)

Set back up and on the next pass my little girl got bit again- this time it was this slab....which would be the biggest fish of the day but not the last...

Then it got interesting....a massive school of whites started hitting. They were not all in one real small area and were not feeding crazy aggressively but they were crashing bait in a 50 yard by 50 yard area....we started throwing into the school. I was excited thinking my girl was gonna get her first white bass blitz....but we couldn't get them to bite. (Would have given anything to have a flyrod in the boat!!). After a few minutes of no bites the surface action kinda slowed down- didn't stop but it was spread out and very random. We decided to go back to trolling because obviously there was a lot of bait and a lot of fish in the area. We ended up with 9 more keeper crappie. We spent the rest of the morning trolling around that one big area (my #1 rule- never leave fish to find fish!). Most fish came in 28-30 feet of water- our shads were running 15-18. The fish that we caught appeared to either be suspended in 15-20 (assume chasing bait below the whites because we were out in the open with not much structure) or on the backside of structure (humps/bushes) where the structure came up to the 20 foot range before dropping back off.

The first fish my daughter caught was a big slab- she actually now has the family record crappie! And I couldn't be happier!

[J-Doc]

Cool report!! Figured the clouds would help the bite a bit. The boat traffic from this weekend has beat the fish down to deeper waters. Glad you found the active fish. .

[Quillback]

That's a slab crappie - congrats to your daughter!

[wc1063]

Great job!!

[nathanhooper]

Thanks for the report. Hope they are still biting good into the rest of the week.