Saturday Crappie Report

[packersooner]

Went up not knowing what to expect given the high and stained water. Plan was to jig shad balls in large coves in the lower end of the lake. Well...that didn't work.

We scanned the typical winter haunts with a side-imager and the shad were very scattered in smaller balls. We picked up a few keepers off of a deep brush pile early on (40-60 fow) and another one at the same depth well away from the brush. Water was stained with a visibility of about five feet.

We then decided to move onto "greener pastures" and check some other reliable places as well as scan for new ones. We could not find the typical large balls of shad. We tried channel bends on the main lake and all sizes of coves. We got as far south as the State Park on both the Big and Little Sac sides. We probably scanned for nearly half the day and occasionally fished. Just some shorts. One item of note was water clarity got much worse by the time we got to Hartley. Maybe around two feet of clarity.

We then decided to return back north and bounced an hour for walleye. One cigar in 50 fow.

Finally ended up the day by returning to the same deep brush pile. Managed to put another six keepers in the boat...including some slabs.

Jig colors varied throughout the day. Probably a function of water clarity and the mix of sun and clouds. Caught them on blue. silver, green, and pink plastics as well a a gray marabou jig. There were several instances where fish would come up on the jigs and not take them. Very lethargic.

Water temps ranged from 37 to 42.

Hope you all were able to figure them out! I am stumped as to why the shad aren't balling up like normal.

Jason

 

 

 

 

[nxs]

We were down around Ruark and only had 2 crappie and one of those was short. Both caught off the bottom in 35' of water on a minnow couldn't get anything to hit a jig. No walleye at all thought sure we would find some. I could just make out the t/m head, still pretty dingy. Best part was getting out!!

Temp run 38* to 41*. We saw the shad scattered as well.

[dan hufferd]

Sounds like you had to work for it, but I would have loved to had a day like yous. We had one white bass in 70' of water at 40' that was it for the day, the sunset was awesome though !

[packersooner]

NXS...yes indeed it was good to get out. This may be my favorite time of year to fish. We launched at RB and saw multiple bald eagles...including a close proximity dive-bomb of a shad. I guess the water clarity didn't come into play for that eagle...that shad had no chance!

Between the eagles, the weather and the sunset that Dan brought up (the sunrise wasn't bad either), it was a fine day.

Just wish I knew why the shad weren't grouping up like normal.