What were they doing up close?

[Shoemoo]

Went to one of the local reservoirs the other day (CJ, for those of you in ID) and fished from shore at one of the campgrounds. This campground has a kind of mini-marina with boat slips where people who are camping can leave their boats overnight. There's a long channel separated from the main body of water by a rock jetty, and then an open area with about half an acre of water that's around 6' deep. The crappie population is mixed, but the vast majority are black crappie. Normally you can't keep them off the hook at this time of year.

The weather here in ID has been colder and wetter than usual. The warm weather is about a month behind schedule and the spawn is definitely late. We've just lately been getting consistent temps in the 70s and 80s. Nighttime temps have been cold, in the 40s and 50s. Unfortunately, I don't have a way to measure surface temps.

I fished from about 7 PM until 4 AM, and got 10 fish, which mostly came in 1s and 2s. They were all nice ones, though. The smallest was 12", largest 14" (I know you guys grow them bigger down south, but a 14" crappie in ID is a monster slab).

Every single one of them was a female white crappie, and almost all of them I caught within a rod's length while fishing off the channel side of the jetty. They all had eggs, too. Aside from me, it was just one other guy fishing, and he caught two small blacks and that was it. I was using a Southern Pro minnow tube under a bobber, or casting it out and reeling in slowly.

I noticed there were a lot of small fish darting in and out of the rocks, probably young of the year bass and panfish. I think the crappies were cruising along the drop off in the channel looking to pick off any small fish that didn't shoot into the rocks quick enough. But when I cleaned them out, their stomachs were empty.

Anyone care to hazard a guess what they were doing right up against the shore, and where all the black crappies went?

[GCD]

Sounds like the Whites were chasing bait and getting ready to spawn, the Blacks are probably in post spawn pattern since they go before the Whites.

[Nightprowler]

Sounds to me like shad in the mood to spawn.

[Shoemoo]

Thanks, that would explain why the blacks have almost all vanished from the shallows.

I'm not sure if there are any shad in this reservoir. They were introduced to the Columbia River in the late 1800s, but I don't think they made it this far upstream before the dams started going in. Some of the downstream dams don't have fish passage systems.

The color I was catching them on was the bleeding shad. The crappie might have thought they were baby squawfish, though.