3 Day Turkey Hunt Crappie trip

[Bill Babler]

Was able to pop back up Sunday thru yesterday and get after the Turkey's and Crappie.  Fished from the 62 mile mark to the 59 mile mark Brown's Bend to Proctor.  Ended up with 24 total crappie over 12" with the biggest at 16"  3 days of fishing for about 6 hrs. a day.

Just fishing the bank.

Water was 63 and chocolate milk muddy, pretty had on this Table Rock boy.  Most of the crappie I caught and that was probably 60+ total were main creek arm and main lake, not in the pockets or small coves.  Most were under 10' deep.

Rainy Creek, Proctor and Golden Goose were simply packed with boats and fishermen.  One set fishing the bank but the middle of these creeks were  crowded with spider riggers to the point of just unbelievable.  Should have taken a photo but at one point I could count 22 boats all spider rigging the Florida Beach area of Rainy Creek.  Visited with several of them all nice folks and they were catching them.  Lots of shorts and small males.  No one was catching what they wanted as far as size was concerned.

There was a team of two ladies running eight 16' rods and they just seemed to be catching fish at a rate I have never seen.  Talked to them and they said the day prior they went thru 30 dozen minnows and had caught and released well over 200 crappie.  I think there must be a big derby coming up and they said they would not have had a decent bag out of the 200 they caught.

Another fun several days on Lake O.

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[96 CHAMP]

I was back in Indian creek Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Usually takes me a half day or so to figure things out but when I did it was all over. Found them in Isolated brush or cover up near the bank, some behind docks, others not, caught most out of just two areas. Seen a lot of people using the spider rig also. Thursday after that front came in they were still there but playing their games a bit but still managed to catch them. Next week with that warmer weather will really get em going.

[Ketchup]

How did the hunt part go?

[Seth]

Crappiemasters tournament was coming up that Saturday. Winners had 11.00# and I "think" the biggest fish of the tournament was a 2.22. We fished around Possum Holler and Browns Bend on Friday, April 19th and kept three limits with 10 fish breaking that 1# mark. The biggest was a 14" sow that weighed just under 1 3/4#. The wind was horrible and it was tough to control the boat, but we just vertical fishing minnows and jigs tipped with minnows in 12-14' of water in the middle of the coves. Most of what we caught were staging sow white crappie. I did pluck a few decent black crappie from a dock near the mouth of the cove. People that came by said the males were on the banks towards the back of the coves.