Started with four poles until crappie decided on blue back glass shads and then when to two......could have caught two limits from Beach Point to Hayes Crossing and then Thompson Creek to Dam in 20-24 fow......alot of fish between 12 and 13 in. and quite a few in the 11 in. range. Was tired of catching fish at 11:00 and gave limit to nice older gentlemen in Sardis....all in all I would call it a nice day of fishing. Fortunately, some days are like this and they tend to make us forget about those really bad days when we couldn't buy a bite.

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Meet a resonable man halfway everytime....don't meet an unresonable man at all.

Glad you had a great day. Can't wait till this wkend, gonna go try 'em
somewhere up here.

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Shoals Area Crappie Association

Nice, we didn't have that good a luck up there Sat, had to go down towards Holiday Lodge to catch ours.

During the week theres no recreational boat traffic which helps alot.

__________________
Meet a resonable man halfway everytime....don't meet an unresonable man at all.

Yep, ya'll retired-ed guys rub it in

my times a comin' - if I live long enough

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Shoals Area Crappie Association

vhouston2,

I saw in another thread where you said that you pull crankbaits using your trolling motor (rather than your outboard w/trolling plate). It sounds like you fish alone sometimes so I'm curious how you control your boat while you reel in your fish. Could you elaborate please, sir?

The beauty of using 4 poles or less is that I can alter the speed on my foot operated trolling motor pretty quick when a fish is on and not tangle or cross lines the majority of the time. When a fish strikes I usually just flip the speed down to around 1.0 mph or so (about 2 speed on my motor) and this usually is enough to keep the boat tracking straight while I manage the fish. If I'm fishing just two poles which I do alot......I simply turn the motor off because the other line is on the opposite side of the boat and is almost impossible to foul up even if there is a fish on that rod too. I don't worry on those occasions when I use small 1/4 oz worm weights to sink the crank baits because they rarely hang bottom since the crank baits float or suspend a little even with the additional weight. If the wind becomes a factor in managing the boat I always just stick to the two pole setup. I almost always without fail go to accuweather and check the hourly forecasts and plan my fishing around the estimted wind speeds for that day. If the wind seems a little high (over 10 mph) I might stay at home and find something more productive to do. Note: Eventhough its an added expense you might want to consider purchasing a trolling motor in the future with an auto pilot feature....this really helps when your fishing solo.

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Meet a resonable man halfway everytime....don't meet an unresonable man at all.

Hey Jeff.....had it easy this summer but might have to come out of partial retirement this fall and really work again for a living......kids are starting to drain my local economy. Not really looking forward to being a weekend warrior again, so I might have to put those little darlings on a tight budget. My wife thinks thats funny.

__________________
Meet a resonable man halfway everytime....don't meet an unresonable man at all.

Dang, I'm just gettin started with pulling the wagon - can't even see the
end of the tunnel. Kids are 7 and 11.
Guess I shoulda started having younguns earlier instead of waiting till my
thirties

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Shoals Area Crappie Association

Do you think you catch more fish using the trolling motor vs. the outboard. How much more depth do you think you get by using the worm weights vs. using no weights at all with the same amount of line out.

We pulled cranks at sardis on saturday. Ended up finding a few keepers in 20-26 ft range also. Only caught 12 keepers, kept count and had 78 total fish. Lots of 11.5'' to 11.75'' fish. Wish the limit was 11'' instead of 12''.

Thanks,
Ringo