Boat trips

[straw hat]

The wife and i took the boat out in the Shaw's bluff area Fri and Monday. Water temps 80 and 82 respectively. About 3' visibility and fairly stained. A fair amount os small fish (eg. 6" crappie,etc.). A total of  keepers for  both trips were 3 White bass and 3 crappie. Not good but the weather was nice. There were only a small number of fish in the timber, most were caught  out in open water at 15 to 18', presumably chasing shad.

[Sam]

On 7/6/2021 at 7:30 AM, straw hat said:

There were only a small number of fish in the timber, most were caught  out in open water

Partner and I have been tearing up the crappie for the last few weeks, but no, they're in the brush.  We figure we caught 70+ in about 6 hours one day last week, BUT only 12 of them were big enough to keep.

Lots of the ones we're catching are just barely short - 9 1/2" to even 9 7/8", so close we think they may grow to legal size yet this year.  Most of the few we're catching and keeping now are slabs, though, up to 13"+.  There are very few of a size in between, right now they're either big (few) or too short (many).

The good thing is that there are a WHOLE bunch of barely-short mostly-black crappie in the lake.  Next year should be a good one!

[straw hat]

That is interesting Sam. Most of the crappie we caught were white crappie and around 6 to 7 inches.  When you say in the brush are you referring to the flooded brush along the back?

[Sam]

No, we're fishing marked brushpiles in 18-22 f.o.w..  There wasn't much of a crappie spawn this spring, probably because of erratic temps and weather, and the fish got scattered, hard to find, and many females were re-absorbing their eggs.  Now all that's about over and they are getting back into a normal summer pattern.  If you're catching real little crappie, 6" or 7", you're fishing too shallow.

[straw hat]

Thanks for the clarification.

Fishing 15 to 20'.  they were all associated with balls of shad.