Thread: Culling on the river

My brother Ray and nephew Caleb had a great day on a local river this past Thursday. I'm not allowed to say what river, but they live near Winston-Salem not far from Neely. If you remember, it was hot on Thursday, but they were able to catch all the crappie in the shade. In fact, that is the only place they would bite. They brought home 39, but thought they had 40. It didn't take long for them to limit out and start culling the smaller ones. They never left sight of the boat ramp and the largest ended up at 13.5".

As you can see from the picture, they would take the front end of the boat and put it next to the bank. Caleb is in the back pulling out one of the larger ones. They said it didn't matter what color as the crappie hit anything put in the water. They also said with the clear water, you could see some of the fish come up and hit the jig. Obviously there was no tightlining or trolling--this was old-fashioned working the bank and laydowns.

Here's one thing I found quite interesting: just about all the fish had eggs. I know the lake crappie spawned out several weeks ago, but it may be that the river ones spawn later. They are going to invite friends over for a nice fish fry with all these fllets from a good day on the water.

My father and his friend Dave went down on the river today. They brought home 15, all over 10", with the largest being 14". Most were caught on a red jig with a chartreuse tail. The 14" crappie had a 3" bream in it's gut. I went to Monk's house a few weeks ago and I've started buying 3" jigs now and Pop saw today what the big ones like to eat. Like last week, most of these crappie had eggs and Pop thinks they are probably two weeks from spawning.