The crappie bite was hot yesterday (5/23). Unfortunately, everything was very small. Sayers has a 9 inch limit on keepers, and only two out of about 80 fish we caught between my son and I would have been legal. Just the same, it got to the point where we were tired bringing in one fish after another on ultralight tackle. Now that was fun. Also, it was amazing to see the variation in color- in addition to the silver with black spots, many were black and some even approached an irridescent blue on the back scales, while others had a light yellow on the belly. What a beautiful fish!

There are alot of good things that happened on your trip. A) You took the time to spend with your son. B) The fish were biting. C) You took in the true beauty of one of Gods creations. Sounds very like a very sucessful outing. All of the above make for great memories. Congrats on a good outing.

Fishing from boat or from shore Was going to go down this weekend but we had a bad experience a couple of years ago on Memorial weekend. We had hard time anchoring because of the waves aused by the wind and all the pleasure boaters and jet ski. No consideration forthe fisherman down there. Were the fish full of eggs and spawning? Might try it next weekend?

They were definitely in spawning colors, but I didn't really note any fat females. The ones that I suspected as females looked like they were already spent- no eggs at all.

Sayer's Lake can get kind of crazy with pleasure boaters, but I was fishing in Hunter's Cove and the water skiers and such tend to avoid that area. Later on the crappie tend to be more prevalent in the main lake body and you just need to avoid it on weekends. It can actually be pretty placid during the week.

I just fished Sayers, Fri, Sat, Sun, and Monday of memorial day weekend. We caught so many crappie! But as mentioned earlier, most were too short (8 - 8.5 inches). But it was fun nonetheless.

To give you an idea of how many keepers we got... Kept around 25 crappie for the weekend, and we probably caught 300+ crappie! so the size is definately down. But i did get into some bluegills and they were all legal in size so that was a good thing

Hurricane- With all of those 8-8.5 inch fish, do you think next year there will be a couple of boatloads of keepers?

Does anyone know if the panfish enhancement program has helped at Sayers? There have always been a lot of crappie in the lake, but I'm not seeing much in terms of overall increase in size.

Just wondering!

Thats a great question! I have hoped that i would have boatloads of keepers this year, but i have been catching 8" crappie consistently for at least the last three years.

If i had to predict, i expect the same thing next year. I like the enhancement program in that it prevents people from throwing 5-6" crappie into their buckets but at the same time it doesnt seem like the 9" size is the magic number.

It may not happen. I'm not a fish biologist, but have read that fish size is relative to the size of the lake, and ratio of bait. Basically, it's lilke fish in a tank. They only grow as big as their environment will support. There may be too many fish in that lake. I may be wrong on all of this, but have read many times about the growth of fish.

eNaturalist: Grow-Grow-Grow

Yes just think how long the water is drawn down in the winter. They start in middle of Feb. and it isn't full till some times into May. A lot of fish in a little water. They probably put a pretty good hurting on the bait fish at this time.

i wish they would stop doing it, but the people in lock haven might not be too happy with water coming down their streets.

it could be the reason the bass fishing has gone to crap on the lake as well. catching a bass is so few and far between on the lake it is hard to fish them.

I have devoted several days to targeting bass by throwing worms, crank/spinnerbaits all day and for the most part i dont even get any bites.