Crappie Report for May 7
Posted: Sun May 07, 2006 11:43 pm
Bobber and I had behaved ourselves all week and had earned a Sunday afternoon outing. As is life, the plans to go after channel catfish in the Ottawa River were corrupted by external interference - the best wecould manage would be a few hours to beat it to the Mississippi River in search of panfish - crappies preferably.
We'd looked for crappies in this particular stretch of the river in previous springs and had little success. Sure we caught some, but never had we found a pile of them to keep us amused for a few hours. When we launched today, I said it was time to try different spots. Why look for crappie in the same spots they weren't at before?
Well there is a tree over there with some promise. And immediately we were into about a dozen decent sized crappies. YAY!
And not far from the tree was a patch of grass with some weed growth just beginning to appear on the bottom in the water around it. It was the new growth weeds that were key today. We tossed small jigs with red and white tubes on them. We let them sink to the bottom and then slowly retrieved them. The action was non-stop as we circled a patch of weeds about 40 feet across and surrounding this patch of dead grass. We caught the fish in two to five feet of water.
Were they aggressive? Bobber had mastered a fly-fishing motion with his crappie rod - when they hit he would set the hook hard and if he missed the fish his jig would fly back around my head
and he would snap the bait back into the same spot. On one of his sets he thought he had been piked, his jig was gone and I was a little grateful for those few moments when I wouldn't have his jig snapping around my head. A few minutes after he lost his bait, I hooked into a good crappie - our biggest of the day (they were all good today) and almost called for the net. I lifted the slab into the boat, thumbed his lip, and was amazed to see Bobber's lost tube in the slab's mouth.
We decided to give our spot a breather and explore for more spots. Hey - that fella over there has a Fish-Hawk hat on - let's go crowd his spot! And that's how we met Brit. We chatted for a few minutes and caught nothing in the neghbourhood.
With about an hour of fishing left in our afternoon, we invited Brit to join us at our spot surrounding the grassy hump. We were back into the fish in a hurry and shared a few red/white tubes with Brit to help him get in on the action. We had to leave so I am not sure how he made out after we left, but we gave him a net of crappies in case he was gonna be hungry when he got home.
To date this spring, today was my best crappie outing. Funny how it turned out so good after we had been crushed to learn we had three hours to go fishing and come back. Here's a scene from Bobber's driveway when we returned. What a great afternoon.
We'd looked for crappies in this particular stretch of the river in previous springs and had little success. Sure we caught some, but never had we found a pile of them to keep us amused for a few hours. When we launched today, I said it was time to try different spots. Why look for crappie in the same spots they weren't at before?
Well there is a tree over there with some promise. And immediately we were into about a dozen decent sized crappies. YAY!
And not far from the tree was a patch of grass with some weed growth just beginning to appear on the bottom in the water around it. It was the new growth weeds that were key today. We tossed small jigs with red and white tubes on them. We let them sink to the bottom and then slowly retrieved them. The action was non-stop as we circled a patch of weeds about 40 feet across and surrounding this patch of dead grass. We caught the fish in two to five feet of water.
Were they aggressive? Bobber had mastered a fly-fishing motion with his crappie rod - when they hit he would set the hook hard and if he missed the fish his jig would fly back around my head
and he would snap the bait back into the same spot. On one of his sets he thought he had been piked, his jig was gone and I was a little grateful for those few moments when I wouldn't have his jig snapping around my head. A few minutes after he lost his bait, I hooked into a good crappie - our biggest of the day (they were all good today) and almost called for the net. I lifted the slab into the boat, thumbed his lip, and was amazed to see Bobber's lost tube in the slab's mouth. We decided to give our spot a breather and explore for more spots. Hey - that fella over there has a Fish-Hawk hat on - let's go crowd his spot! And that's how we met Brit. We chatted for a few minutes and caught nothing in the neghbourhood.
With about an hour of fishing left in our afternoon, we invited Brit to join us at our spot surrounding the grassy hump. We were back into the fish in a hurry and shared a few red/white tubes with Brit to help him get in on the action. We had to leave so I am not sure how he made out after we left, but we gave him a net of crappies in case he was gonna be hungry when he got home.
To date this spring, today was my best crappie outing. Funny how it turned out so good after we had been crushed to learn we had three hours to go fishing and come back. Here's a scene from Bobber's driveway when we returned. What a great afternoon.
...gotta love it. Nice catch guys!