July Surprise

[Jerry Blake]

I took the weekend off to spend some time with the wife. We had a nice time tripping around North Arkansas and the Buffalo National River. I figured I needed to since I was fishing in Canada for 8-days over our 22nd anniversary back in May.

Anyway, the trip that I had scheduled for today got rescheduled, which left me open so I figured I'd do a little scouting. I heard from several sources that the fishing was real slow over the weekend and it's been tough to find any big crappie looking for a boat ride for a couple weeks now so I was expecting to have a slow morning.

I took my deck hand, Owen, Carlos (another fishing guide) and his grandson. We fished from about 6:15 to about 8:45. It started out pretty typical for this time of year with pretty light bites and one or two small to average size crappie per brush pile. But we hit a couple spots that had some "good-ole-biguns" and they were hitting hard and taking off like scalded dogs.

We only kept 22 but the 10 biggest ranged from 14.5 to 16.5-inches. We had 2 that weighed 2-pounds even and several more that were close:

I sure hope we can find a few more in the morning.

I fried up a mess this evening with hush puppies, cole slaw, and baked beans - life is GOOD!

[grubby]

Looks like Ya'll had a good morning there Jerry. WTG

[OKSTATEjiggy]

Those are some huge crappie on the bottom

[jaxsprat]

I call that a Good Morning & a half-Great looking catch. Take me all summer to catch that total weight in Illinois:D

[speckfinder]

too bad the fishing is slow

[GRIZZ]

Woof, those are some sweet fish. Can't wait to come back and get some of those myself. Nice job.

[catman]

way to go jerry.

[wasabi]

WOW! Awesome fish. All I can find are smaller fish.

[kycreek]

That Is A Great Stringer Anytime Of The Year.

[bttmline]

Ok Jerry, You said a few small ones from brush piles, So where did these one come from. Depth and such. Let us wanna bes in on your techniques.
Tim