Thread: Solo: How I caught crappie today. 10/08/2020

Good day for sure, congrats!

I really enjoy your teaching posts. My biggest struggle, and I have many, is interpreting what I see on my electronics. You are obviously quite adept at this interpretation, as you often speak of fishing offshore structures. I can find brushpiles, but I just can’t discern whether they have fish on them. Would you consider doing a post or two with some screenshots? It appears from your pictures that you have the same unit as me on your console.

Originally Posted by footballcoach

You always have good posts and stories and you are truly unselfish. Thank you for sharing and for helping others.

What he said

Thank you for the great report, you are obviously a better angler than I, both at angling, and sharing.

Sent from my SM-A505U using Tapatalk

Originally Posted by ET Fish

I really enjoy your teaching posts. My biggest struggle, and I have many, is interpreting what I see on my electronics. You are obviously quite adept at this interpretation, as you often speak of fishing offshore structures. I can find brushpiles, but I just can’t discern whether they have fish on them. Would you consider doing a post or two with some screenshots? It appears from your pictures that you have the same unit as me on your console.

ET, if I can remember to take more screen shots, I will. Grin. But I have said and still believe that the biggest crappie run in smallest schools so when you see a brush pile with just a couple of fish on it, most people pass these piles up. But they can give you your biggest fish of the day. Example of the best day for big crappie that Cuonthelake and I had from about 3-4 years ago.

It was spring and pre spawn time. There is an underwater ridge that in the past we had caught big slabs on and we checked it out with the electronics. It was offshore, current was ripping and wind from the north almost 8-10 mph. Only one little dot showed up on the cover when we passed over it, but I said let’s fish it anyway. We made the run to check it out, might as well fish it.

I got the boat in position to make a natural presentation, set the spot lock on Ivan, and we began our casting. It took a couple of casts to see just how the jig was reacting and then, as Candi does to me so many times, caught the first fish of the day. A slab over 16” long and 3 lbs. Very next cast, another slab that was a couple of ounces over 3 lbs. Back to back 3 pounders and I have never caught a 3 on Chickamauga. Then she caught another 15” slab under 3 and I made her swap seats with me. Lolol. Then I caught back to back 14.5” slabs and gave her the seat back. That was 5 TARP sized crappie from that spot in about 10-15 minutes. She caught another 13.5“ and a 12.5” Crappie and then not another bite.

7 slabs in about 30 minutes. Too bad that we weren’t in a tournament. Now we don’t do this on every trip. All these fish came from a spot that most would pass up because they didn’t see a huge school of crappie. Those huge schools on Chickamauga are little fish and although fun to catch, will only produce one or two big crappie from time to time.

ET, thanks for asking the question, and DK for an eloquent answer. That is info that needs to be considered every time the DI lights up like a Christmas tree, maybe they're all small fish, and like you said, fun to catch, but not what we're after.

Thanks for sharing ! Well done!

I grew up fishing for bass and crappie back in the late 50’s and 60’s with my dad. Back then there were no electronics and top water in the spring and fall was it for bass and trolling in the spring for crappie was all we knew. I quit fishing as I got to high school and didn’t fish at all until about 10 years ago. I bought a boat and started fishing again. Crappie fishing is my favorite but I really struggled and rarely caught anything even with the electronics on my new boat, except in spring when I could troll and catch them. Chickamauga is a big lake and overwhelming to new guys like I was. Then I started reading forums and found DK one day. I never joined, but I will say, I would come here to check for a DK post and I’ll say my fishing is better now even though I still have more fish less days than I like. That is because reading the electronics and ID’ing fish is still my weak link. I never read one of his posts without learning something though and I do appreciate him and his generosity. I’ll be 68 in a couple of months and he has proven you can teach an old dog new tricks!!! I sure hope he keeps posting cause I’ll sure keep reading!! I’m new here as far as being a member of the forum, but I’ve been learning from DK for several years now and wanted to pitch in and say that.